Sip the Poison and Drink the Wine
by JustAnotherPseudonym
Summary: Set immediately after season 4 finale. Regina is present when Emma awakes as the new Dark One, and all that the Dark One wants is what is already meant to be-to be forever together with the Evil Queen even if the Evil Queen insists on her being a hero. SwanQueen
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own Once or any affiliated characters**

 **A/N: I haven't written anything in quite a while but suddenly felt inspired and this is what my fingers ended up typing out. Hope you enjoy.**

She hadn't meant for her sacrifice to be proof of her love, but it was hard to deny it after all had been said and done. She had taken on the Darkness for someone who could have likely handled it better since experience creates resistance. Yet, when they were out there on that street and the Darkness was eating away Regina's soul, Emma was acting before she could weigh out all the reasons why she was about to do a really stupid thing.

Reason and logic hadn't really mattered at the time. All that had mattered was not letting Regina's soul be devoured. She hadn't thought about her parents, her lover, or her son who would likely assume her sacrifice was part of a hero complex that had been ordained upon her by a curse. To them, her very stupid thing would be written off and used as reason to embark on another quest.

Yet, there had been one person in the crowd who had been looking in her eyes as she absorbed the Darkness. Regina had not backed away. She had not looked at Emma like her heroism was a thing simply etched in stone. She had looked at Emma like she was happening upon a secret that would undoubtedly leave scars upon their world.

And then, Emma had been whisked away by a shadow and then consumed by it. She had awoken at the edge of the woods, but she didn't awake alone and cold like every start of an evil fairy tale began. Instead, she had awoken in a warm embrace surrounded by familiar magic. As her eyes fluttered open, she knew better than to be surprised that Regina was holding her with the Dark One's dagger resting on the ground next to them.

A part of her had wanted to reach out and grab hold of the dagger. A part of her knew that she needed it so that she couldn't be controlled, but there was still a part of her that was only human. There was a part that knew the dagger could not belong to her. It needed to belong to Regina. It needed to be with the person who understood more about falling apart and being pieced back together than anyone else in this silly little town full of dragons, witches, princes, and queens.

"You silly little girl," Regina whispered as Emma's eyes met hers. "You stupid, silly little girl."

"Stupid is as stupid does," Emma replied, her voice scratchy and raw. Her throat felt as if she had been screaming, and she supposed that she might have been. She remembered little of what had happened after the darkness had taken her.

Regina didn't laugh. She didn't grin in a knowing way that spoke to her underlying love of Emma's _let it all go to Hell_ attitude. Instead, her eyes slid shut and she softly asked, "Do you know what you've done, Swan?"

Emma tried to pull away from Regina's hold, but the grip tightened so that there was no escape. So while Regina's words had Emma second guessing her choices, Regina's hold let her know that everything was already forgiven. "I couldn't watch you become the Dark One," Emma confessed. "Not after I already had to watch you die."

"You let it take you from me," Regina's voice was as raw as Emma's. Perhaps, they had both been screaming.

Emma's shaking hand rose to Regina's face so that her fingers could graze across the other woman's cheek. "Hey." As soon as the soft word left her, Regina's eyes were pulled open. "It kind of looks like you found me."

And then it came, the hint of a laugh falling from the tearstained lips of the Queen. "I guess not even the Dark One can take away the optimism bred into a Charming."

"Damn right," Emma declared, her conviction mostly fabricated.

Regina didn't buy into Emma's bravado, but she knew they both needed the routine of their banter so chose not to highlight their false levity. She loosened her grip and aided Emma in rolling up off of the ground. Once they were standing, they looked at each other and then quickly away.

Emma stuffed her hands in the front pockets of her jeans and looked around at the darkness that surrounded them. She didn't know what else to say and hadn't yet taken stock of all the changes made to her since she had taken on the Dark One's shadow. She felt kind of different, but didn't feel like she had suddenly become an entirely different person. Her thoughts came to her differently, as if muddled and tainted but not unclear. She could tell right from wrong—knew the inherent difference between them. Her moral compass hadn't disappeared. It was still a part of her, still guiding her.

"So…" Emma said through a sigh. "I guess this means a curse on both our houses."

Eyes narrowed and her jaw tightened. Regina knew that it wouldn't take long for the Dark One to show itself. She knew that Emma's words had not been a threat, but she also understood that the words were not Emma's alone. "It's best you behave yourself, old friend," she warned. "Defeat is dancing around you."

A dark thrill ran across Emma's skin. She knew that she shouldn't delight in the challenge, but she couldn't help but being overwhelmed. She had never before had to control darkness, not to the extent that she needed to control it now. "You've always been at your most beautiful when you're angry," she couldn't help but say. "You are glorious even when you sickeningly delight in the glory of your White Knight."

Regina raised her brow and stared imperiously at the newly minted Dark One. "Perhaps we should establish some ground rules if we are to remain…pleasant until you are cast out back to the depths of whatever dark oblivion you come from."

"You control the dagger." Emma motioned towards the dagger that still laid benevolently on the ground between them. "I think that is enough."

"Am I to believe that you are going to let me keep it?" Regina asked, as she desperately tried to find the lie resting beneath the blatant truth.

Emma's hands fell from her pockets. She stepped towards Regina and then reached over to grab onto the other woman's arms. "You were my motivation, Regina. I'm not trying to cure my spinelessness like Rumpelstiltskin. All I want to do is protect you, against everything and everyone." At her words, Emma's magic swirled between them. It was no longer white and no longer pure.

"And that's it?" Regina knew better than to believe altruistic declarations spoken from a Dark One's lips. "You protect my happiness and leave everyone else alone?"

"I _am_ your happiness, Regina," Emma quickly corrected.

A humorless laugh fell from the depths of Regina's soul. "Then it's my freewill you're claiming?"

Emma brought Regina's right hand to cover her heart. "Your soul is a part of mine. It belongs to me, and as long as I have it I'll be sated."

"And Robin?" Regina can't help but ask. "What will you do to him?"

"Nothing, as long as he understands things." Emma promised. "I'm not a murderer."

It was a true sentiment. Emma wasn't a murderer, nor did she want to be. She didn't even really want to start her relationship with Regina in such a barbaric way, but there was a right and a wrong. She knew the difference between them. And, Regina being by her side is what was right no matter what the cost might be to achieve it.

Regina could feel Emma's beating heart pound a steady beat against the fingers of the hand Emma had captured. "And Henry?"

"He is your son, and no harm will come to him." Emma spoke with conviction, though she knew that some part of what she had said was jumbled and wrong.

"We will still try to remove the Dark One from you," Regina promised. "That doesn't go away just because you believe love has somehow found the way."

Emma pressed further into Regina's hand. "That's okay with me."

Regina captured and held onto Emma's gaze that had become speckled with darkness. "There were easier ways than this to tell me that you're in love with me, Emma."

A smirk fell across the former Savior's face. "I don't think there was any other way you'd believe me. Not with Hook and Robin in the way."

"Maybe not," Regina conceded, "but my goodness, Emma. This is a mess."

Another step closer and Emma was just a breath apart from Regina. "It's our mess."

Regina dipped her gaze. "I swear, Emma, you're the only person in existence that can take my freewill and offer me my happy ending in the same instance."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Emma proclaimed before she dipped down and captured Regina's lips with her own. She let the gentle pressure of her lips drive Regina into action. She didn't want to push too hard, and didn't want it to seem like she was forcing something that wasn't meant to be.

It took only the slightest of moments before Regina fell into the kiss and began to explore Emma's love and all that it had to offer both in its goodness and darkness. She allowed herself to get lost in it. Let her magic mingle with Emma's in ways that tainted and purified them both.

When they pulled apart, Regina reached up and brushed her fingertips to her lips. They hadn't been physically transformed, but they felt different. She felt a lot like she had just taken a sip of poison and a drink of wine, and she couldn't help but want more.

"We will be happy," Emma promised. "No more putting them before us. No more striving for redemption. Just happiness, Regina. We deserve that."

Regina sighed. She couldn't find the strength to fight against Emma's promises. She didn't want to.

"We are the Knight and the Queen, Regina," Emma declared. "No one can take our happiness again."

Why, Regina silently wondered, did she fall in love with Emma Swan? Why did her happiness have to become temptation to her darkness? What made her so damn important to always be tested and tried?

"You'll never suffer again," Emma continued. "Neither of us will."

Someday, Regina was convinced, Emma's promises would be real. They wouldn't be driven by an ancient evil that held onto Emma's soul.

"We'll live forever together, just you and me."

Already, Regina missed Emma. "Of course we will, dear," she finally replied. "Of course." She reached out her hand and clasped onto Emma's. "But first we'll need to get home. We can't stay in the woods."

Emma looked around as if she were just once again realizing that they were miles away from town. "Oh yeah, sure." She stumbled over her words since she had been so abruptly torn from her almost maniacal rant.

"Tomorrow we can let your parents and Hook know that you'll be staying with me from now on. Henry can stay with your parents while you get settled in." With her free hand Regina reached out and summoned the Dark One's dagger to her.

Something felt wrong about Henry being away, but the emotion driving her malcontent was too far removed for Emma to protest Regina's decision. "Makes sense," she instead agreed. "I wouldn't want him getting hurt from misunderstanding the situation."

Regina's steps faltered, but she quickly caught herself. "Henry understands True Love," she said. "I don't see him causing any distress."

"That's true," Emma haplessly nodded. "The Kid does have the heart of the Truest Believer."

They walked in silence for a few moments before Emma unexpectedly mentioned, "I'll miss him while he's away."

Regina swallowed a thick ball of pain caught in her throat. Emma was still Emma…but not.

"Do you think," Emma began to ask but then seemed to think it was better left unasked before finishing her question.

"He'll always love you," Regina intuited the thing Emma wished to know. It was the same question she asked herself every time she did something she thought Henry wouldn't like.

Emma nodded but said nothing else. Their silence remained until they reached Regina's home and settled in. Neither spoke again until they were laying opposite each other on Regina's bed, eyes heavy from the too long day.

"Heartache and rage," Emma confessed in the darkness. "That's mostly all I feel."

Regina remained silent and waited for Emma to finish voicing her rambling thoughts, afraid that if she spoke too soon then _her_ Emma would disappear again and would be replaced with the new darkness.

"Everything I thought that healed, is open and raw. All there is, is hurt and hate…and somewhere buried inside of all of that is some spec of love, and I know that's you, Regina. So…don't leave, okay?" Emma sounded more woman falling apart than the Dark One. She was weak and vulnerable and she was speaking to the one person she hoped would never let go.

"Hey," Regina whispered as she reached out and gathered Emma's hand in her own. "I'll never leave you, Emma."

Emma nodded once and then curled her body around Regina's. She would keep Regina close. It was what she wanted and it was what the Dark One wanted. She would hold on until the Dark One was driven away or until it killed her. No matter her fate, Emma knew that Regina would go on. Regina would have happiness. It was a promise that Emma Swan and the Dark One would be sure to keep.


	2. Chapter 2

She couldn't help but be afraid that she had come so far only to have let everyone down. They had, collectively, decided to give her the dagger. They had entrusted her because she had earned it. No longer was she considered a lost cause, but instead was wrapped in the golden light of heroism and counted amongst the elite heroes who came from some long forgotten land of magic and mysticism.

She was certainly not living the life she had expected, nor was she living the life she felt she deserved. Yet, as Emma Swan laid in Regina's bed fresh from a fall from grace, Regina met with Snow White, Prince Charming, Captain Hook, and Robin Hood as if she belonged amongst them. They gathered in the middle of her living room, and took their corners so that they could deliberate on what might come next. The Dark One's dagger rested on the table between them, gleaming with Emma's name etched on its blade.

All except Regina looked at it as if it was scorching them. No one reached out for it. No one wanted to hold the cold metal in their grip knowing that taking ownership of the blade would mean taking control of a woman who had entrusted them in saving her soul. Emma had told them to save her—the right way.

"Are we willing to assume that she's gone…that she's no longer Emma?" Robin was the first one brave enough to break their silence. Perhaps, he was too far removed to understand the tragedy they were living in. He had known Emma for the least amount of time and arguably only interacted with her when Regina acted as the filter. Or, maybe he just didn't know what to do since his lover was across the room looking lost to him, and the only way he knew how to make anything better was to _do_ something.

"I don't think that's how it works," Snow answered as her gaze shifted away from the dagger so that she could look at Robin. "Rumpelstiltskin was always part the man and part the Dark One."

"Ay, but always the Crocodile nonetheless," Hook slurred his words as he sprayed his pain into the room. He smelled like a dumpster lined with sticky runoff of stale liquor. "He was obsessed, even when there was nothing left to obsess over." It was a startlingly apt observation made by a man wizened by too much alcohol.

"But Emma's different," Charming quickly disagreed. "Rumpelstiltskin was never the Savior."

"Well, to be fair, Emma's potential for Darkness has always been a part of her," Robin tactlessly pointed out. "As far as we know, this curse might have undone everything that made Emma…good."

"No, I refuse to believe that," Snow shook her head and closed her eyes as if refusing to see anything that might reveal a reason to doubt.

"I hate to be the one to say it," Robin continued to push, "but we have to make a choice. Are we going to focus on saving the town or Emma? Because whether we want to admit it or not, whoever or whatever Emma might have become is likely a threat to Storybrooke."

"We save her," Snow answered without thought. "We don't abandon her."

Charming looked to his wife, the turmoil of his doubt clearly written across his brow. "Snow," he whispered, "Emma would want the town to be safe."

"And why does what she would want matter? She cared damn little for the rest of us." Hook harshly threw his words into the mix, obviously having lost any reason to care who he might hurt. Well…" his eyes roamed the room until they fell upon Regina's silent form, "she cared damn little for _most_ of us," he corrected.

"Hey," Charming took a warning step towards the drunken pirate. "Emma did the right thing."

And there it was, that dastardly turn of phrase that haunted every corner of Regina's life. 'Do the right thing' was, perhaps, the greatest magical mystery of all the worlds. It morphed and changed without any constants. What was the 'right thing' in one moment could be the 'wrong thing' in the next. There was no compass aiding Regina in avoiding more mistakes. She was simply just searching for the thing to do that wouldn't make everything collapse, and if Hook wanted to be selfish and think that anything either she or Emma did was solely for themselves then the pirate could just go ahead and drink himself to death.

"Emma didn't _do_ anything, mate," Hook pushed on, actively refusing to acknowledge the glare coming from the Evil Queen. "She made a choice and, I hate to be the one to break it to you but, she certainly didn't choose you and she sure as hell didn't choose me."

"Who knows what Regina might have done as the Dark One," Snow carelessly argued. "Emma might have saved everyone just by making sure that the Evil Queen didn't become the new Dark One."

"Whoa," Robin cut in before Hook could say anything else. "This certainly isn't going to get us anywhere. We've not come here to sling around guesses as to why Emma did what she did. We're here to make a plan. Regina?" His eyes cut to Regina and Regina knew that she could no longer maintain her silence. She would be forced to participate, and would be forced to pretend like she hadn't brought Emma into her home and shared her bed.

"I'll not tell you where she is," she spoke with the confidence she wished she felt. "I don't think anyone is ready to confront her."

"Are you saying you've seen her?" Snow stood and advanced towards Regina. "You know where Emma is?"

Regina gave a slight nod. "Emma and I have come to an arrangement," she perilously announced. "It is the closest we'll come to a truce with the Dark One." She silently dared anyone to challenge her, dared them to doubt her.

"And what is this _truce_ costing us?" Robin asked.

"It costs _us_ nothing," Regina quickly dismissed. "She only asked for concessions from me, which I have already granted. So I suggest we do as has already been suggested, and start finding a way to both save Emma _and_ protect this town."

"No, Regina," Snow's desperation visibly rose as panic filled her eyes. She needed to know that her daughter was okay. "We need to speak to, Emma."

"And accomplish what?" Regina coolly asked. "You know as well as I do that Emma is not the woman you knew, and we both know you're not ready to see the person she's become." She straightened so that she was looking down at the Dark One's mother. "Besides, when Emma is ready, she'll come to you."

"My point exactly," Hook called into the silence, still desperate to put his pain in the spotlight. "Emma loves us all, she just loves one of us more, which is exampled by her going to Regina first."

"Shut up, Hook," Charming scolded.

"Maybe we should all just…take a break," Robin suggested still trying to defuse an already out of control situation. "Charming, you and Snow can just tell anyone that if they see Emma to contact us, and Hook, you should sober up."

"And you?" Hook spit his words at Robin. "Will you let your lady tell you that you're still her great love?"

"No," Regina had reached her limit. She couldn't continue to pretend like any of them would have a say in what happened. In the end, it always had and always would be settled by her and Emma. "You will all be leaving until It's time for us to talk about this like civilized adults."

Looks were exchanged, but no protests voiced. "We'll call you," Charming told Regina as Snow turned to walk out of Regina's house. After that, one-by-one they filed away and left Regina standing alone—the Dark One's dagger still resting on the table.

It was a sign of their continued trust in her even in all of the heartbreak. They trusted that she would know when to bring Emma to them. They trusted that whatever concessions Regina had given that it didn't interfere with the overreaching goal to bring Emma back.

Regina ran her hand through her hair and then reached out and picked up the dagger. Her fingers traced the grooves of Emma's name. She had not known before what it was like to connect so intimately to the grooves on the blade. Even when her mother had wanted the power of the blade for herself, Regina had not really felt the intensity of fear, loathing, and love that she felt at seeing Emma's name.

She hated so much of what Emma had become, but loved so much of the woman anyway. It was a cruel realization to have come upon just as Emma had sacrificed everything for her. It was a sick twist of fate that had made this their beginning.

Regina shook her head to clear away the melancholy that had begun to fill her. She placed the dagger over the smooth flesh of her left forearm. Her hand holding the dagger started to alight with magic that soon engulfed both dagger and flesh. Within moments, the dagger burned into her arm leaving beveled scars of its design on her flesh. Instantly, Regina felt the darkness of the dagger inside of her and let it become a part of her. Fighting it would have likely set her entire arm on fire, or killed her. She wasn't quite sure which since, before last night, she had never before attempted to absorb such an ancient symbol full of magic.

She had assumed that the spell wouldn't have worked at all. She had only tried it since Emma was sharing her bed and she needed to be sure that Emma wouldn't steal the dagger in the night and then run off. It was the most extreme safety measure that she could think of outside of hogtying Emma to a bedpost.

Once satisfied that the dagger was safely settled, Regina made her way up the stairs and slowly approached her room. She prepped herself for facing Emma both as the Dark One's love and Emma's savior. The very fact that she needed to become anyone else at all, was a complete juxtaposition of who she always was when she was with Emma. Because before… when they fought against one another and then _for_ one another, Regina had never had to be anyone other than who she was without the spinning of tales that built characters instead of people. But, as Regina had learned many times, things changed— _she_ changed.

Regina entered her bedroom and was unsurprised to see Emma sitting up at the edge of the bed. Their hero had obviously been listening in on a meeting that happened way too soon after the newest disaster. "They are lost without the Savior," Regina needlessly declared.

"How can I still be expected to lead them?" Emma asked, not turning to look at Regina.

"You're not." Regina would not pretend that the co-dependence of their so-called heroes wasn't a thing to be criticized and mocked. "It's almost as if they've forgotten how to do anything without you."

"And you?" Emma boldly wondered. "Are you as…" she couldn't even find the words to describe the helplessness that she had just witnessed. It was a heartbreaking realization that every one of her adversaries up to this point had been right. Without her and Regina, Storybrooke didn't stand a chance. She and Regina sustained the town and its people.

Sometimes," Regina couldn't help but confess, "I continue on even if I'm not really trying to do so." She closed the distance between them and then sat on the bed next to Emma. "I'll not pretend like it would be easy without you, but I would find a way."

Emma's eyes found Regina's. "I've always admired your strength." The words sounded like Emma, but there was a hint of something else mixed in. She spoke as if she had known Regina for decades instead of years. She spoke with blatant memory as if she had seen everything that Regina had been through since the very beginning.

"I fear that the darkness has made you more charming," Regina saw no point in running away from the facts as they were. Emma had become the Dark One. Everyone needed to understand that—really understand it so that they could all just move on and figure out either how to cast the darkness out or learn to live with it.

"I think it wiped away the inhibition." Emma raised her arm and placed it around Regina's waist. "All the reasons I had before for not getting what I wanted, don't seem as important anymore."

"Power will do that." Regina shamelessly fell into Emma's hold. "It blurs the lines."

Emma was still settling into the changes of what becoming a being of Great Darkness would mean. She didn't feel too much like the Devil. It felt more like walking side-by-side with a demon. The demon didn't control her, but it was there adding to her words and interrupting her thoughts. It asked her to consider things and think of things that before might have been untenable.

"They need to see me," Emma decided. "They need to know that I'm not going to destroy the town—I'm not the new Big Bad."

Regina found comfort in Emma's warm embrace, but little relief in Emma's words. She knew that Emma didn't intend on running through the town cursing and damning its inhabitants. The Dark One had never been a common thug. It orchestrated and planned and fed off of the deepest darkest fears of the soul it shared.

"They only want to save you." Regina closed her eyes and forced herself to pull away from the fog of love that wrapped around her in Emma's presence. "We all do."

"Robin doesn't," Emma was quick to point out. "He's ready to gather a mob and hand out stones and pitchforks." Her dislike for the man was founded in nothing else except for his deluded idea that he deserved Regina. He had done nothing for her…had sacrificed nothing. Every time Robin had a choice to either pick Regina or something else, he had always chosen the something else. He never risked anything for a woman who constantly risked everything without restraint.

"He'll not pursue anything without my approval." Regina superimposed her will above Emma's. "He's not a threat."

Emma understood that Regina was making a demand to leave Robin unharmed. Something inside of Emma felt compelled to bow down to the order. She briefly wondered if it was because of the dagger or because she didn't want to start a war over someone so insignificant. "He's safe," she assured.

"Okay," Regina said as she stood up. She reached out her hand to Emma so that she could pull the other woman up and they could start their day.

Emma's eyes fell to the burn marks etched into Regina's forearm. She reached out and traced her fingers across the lines of scars. She, of course, knew that it was the dagger. She could feel it just as much as see its marks. "Does it hurt?" She asked as she continued to caress Regina's arm.

"Only as it settles," Regina whispered. "I can hardly feel it now."

Emma stood, her hand still on Regina's arm. "I don't think this is safe."

"Probably not," Regina agreed. "But it's the answer we have, for now."

There was a part of Emma that knew that Regina's actions shouldn't have been possible, but there was so little she understood about magic and the ancient evil she now shared her body with. The only person now keeping her safe from harm was Regina—the woman who had always been _her_ savior.

"So what's on the agenda today?" Emma tried to infuse levity into the too serious moment. "If I get a vote, then I vote for skinny dipping in the nearest lake."

Regina rolled her eyes. "You would."

Emma's hand dropped so that it was holding onto Regina's. She wasn't going to let go. "Hey," Emma protested, "I've been very good so far, but there's no reason for me to pretend anymore that I don't want you."

Regina felt her body flush, but pushed down her own desire. She didn't want to give into anything too soon, because if this was to be their beginning then she'd still make the most of it. "Why don't we just focus on getting you back to your old self for now?"

Emma smirked. "My old self wanted you, too."

"Some days, Emma Swan," Regina shook her head. "You're simply impossible."

"Only for you." Emma meant her words as a joke, but they both knew that the words meant far more than a joke. Because, for each other they would be the impossible, and do the impossible. Whether that meant wiping out the light of the moon or burning daggers into their flesh, it didn't really matter. They would always find a way to keep going, even if they were afraid and had no plan. They would take what they had, find the faith they needed to forge on and then would save the damn day.

 **A/N: Thank you for reading. I think I might actually have a plot in my head waiting to get out.**


	3. Chapter 3

She had been asked to sit idly by and do nothing until the proper time arose. She had not been ordered, but asked. Before, the idiosyncrasies in syntax would have likely meant very little to her. Whether asked or demanded, she would have likely done whatever it is she intended on doing in the first place. However, what once was, had changed. Emma was no longer driven solely by her will alone, and it wasn't just the Dark One that whispered into her consciousness like a cool wind brushing against her flesh. There was also the Bearer of the Dagger—a woman powerful enough to lock away the dagger in her flesh and bone—who could demand of Emma anything without restraint.

So far, Regina had demanded only one thing: Do not kill or harm anyone for any reason without consulting her first. It was a common sense demand that unfortunately had to be voiced despite its simplicity. Emma had no current compulsion to kill anyone, but she had not yet been converted long enough to know where her dark desires might lead. She didn't know where her new temperament might find its threshold, and to be fair, if she sat idly by then she never would know.

Emma didn't believe that there would ever be a 'proper time', and she doubted that Regina really thought that there would be either. They were most likely just wasting time waiting for something to happen that would shift the focus away from what the new 'Dark One' might do. They needed the spotlight to be elsewhere so that no one would bother to notice that Emma took residence in Regina's home and that Regina now bore a scar that eerily resembled the Dark One's dagger.

Yet, three days had passed and nothing had happened. The townsfolk weren't holed up in their homes with X's marked on the doors waiting for Armageddon. Instead, the people went to work, took their children to school, ate, drank, and otherwise lived life confident that everything was under control. They had blind faith in their heroes, even when there was no recent confirmation that they should.

Emma now understood that she and Regina were the ones that acted and everyone else just reacted like mindless drones. She was not as powerless as she had believed before. She was not just some savior chosen at random by a curse. She was born a savior because she was the only one strong enough to become the being needed to shift the tides of fate.

Sitting idly by accomplished nothing, which was why she walked out of Regina's front door and straight towards town. There was no reason for her to keep away like she carried some contagious disease. What she had, wasn't something anyone could easily catch nor was it something that could easily be controlled-and she did need to learn to control it. She needed to know what this 'thing' inside of her might try and do when it was around someone who couldn't control her just by changing the syntax of their words.

As she walked, her body was tense. She felt as if she was in a horror movie awaiting for something dastardly to jump out and frighten her. Yet, as she walked and one-by-one encountered the town's inhabitants, no one ran away from her and she felt no need to hide away in the shadows like a vampire afraid of the sun. It was as if everyone had forgotten or didn't know that their Savior Swan had turned into the Dark Swan.

She continued her trek, greeting people as they greeted her. She didn't stop for any exchange longer than 'how are you' and 'have a good day'. Even before, she rarely had time to have at length conversations with everyone milling about their day. She was often too busy fighting monsters and evil to 'smell the roses'.

It was only when she reached Granny's Diner that she was given a knowing look, and it hadn't come from anyone other than the Queen herself. Emma gave Regina a small wave and then found an isolated booth to sit in. She knew that Regina would either join her or walk out afraid to cause a scene. She could practically feel Regina's heavy consternation on the very edges of her awareness. It pulsed inside of her, letting her know that Regina was...while not unhappy, certainly dissatisfied with Emma's decision to enter the public eye.

She couldn't help but wonder if Regina had the same wisps of awareness of her that she had of Regina. She guessed that the pulse of sensation was most likely due to the dagger Regina had absorbed into her person. It was the most simplistic answer for such a complicated circumstance.

"You really shouldn't look so smug, dear," Regina commented as she slid in the booth across from Emma.

"I shouldn't?" Emma mocked. "The last thing I remember is going all Dark One in the middle of town square, yet everyone is greeting me like nothing ever happened."

" _It_ happened exactly as they remember," Regina harshly whispered. "The darkness came and it took _me_."

"And who chose this?" Emma challenged. "Who decided that it was best to lie to everyone?"

"Who do you think?" Regina refused to be further baited, and refused to sustain a pointless argument. Of course she had lied. Of course she had unilaterally decided that it was better for everyone to think that the Evil Queen was Evil again and the Savior was still around to save everyone. They lived in a place that needed heroes, and she was much more comfortable being the former rather than the latter.

"I can't believe my parents would just go along with this. What about Henry?" Emma questioned, just able to consider the son that had all but disappeared from her life. She hadn't seen Henry in days and he hadn't tried to contact her. It seemed outrageously out of character for him, so she assumed that Regina had said or done something that ensured Henry didn't know where Emma was staying.

"You underestimate your parents' willingness to see you hunted down like an animal," Regina reasoned. "They want to protect you more than they want to protect this town." It was a heartless and cruel fact that when lives were measured in value, some just turned out being worth more. Unfortunately for the town, Regina and the Charmings chose Emma above everyone else.

Before Emma could reply, Granny approached their table. She looked between the two women as if she knew something more was going on than a casual lunch. "I'll have no trouble between the two of you in here, will I?" She asked.

"No trouble," Regina answered for the both of them as Emma's eyes roamed over the older woman and assessed the threat. "It's like we said, Emma controls the dagger so you have nothing to fear from the Evil Queen."

"Alright," Granny nodded but her eyes trekked to Emma for confirmation.

Emma raised her hands, palms outward in a gesture of harmless surrender. "I think everything is okay, for now."

"Okay, Emma," Granny's stance relaxed, having drawn obvious comfort from the Savior's assurance. "I can smell the Darkness, you know," she told them both. "You both reek of it. So, I'm not quite sure what you did, Emma, to control this one, but be careful." She didn't wait for a reply before she turned so that she could reclaim her spot behind the counter.

Both Regina and Emma watched her walk away, waiting for the woman to be a safe distance before they continued their conversation.

"I'm not going to make you or my parents liars," Emma said as soon as she felt it was safe to do so. "That's the only reason why I'm going along with this."

"The only reason?" Regina's doubt was anything but subtle. "Though you often present yourself as an inept idiot, we both know you are far from it."

Emma could feel it again-that pulse of disapproval rush out from Regina and then into her. This time, it held a greater tinge of anger than the frustrated acceptance she felt before. "What is it you're saying?" she asked, as she actively ignored the anger that she knew wasn't quite all hers.

"You couldn't stand them looking at you like an evil villain," Regina's words scorched a path between them. "What they think matters to you...it always has and it always will." Regina's eyes widened as she realized what it was she had said. She hadn't meant to become so easily lost in a blind wave of anger. "I'm sorry," she immediately apologized. "I didn't mean..."

"No," Emma interrupted, her voice even yet firm. "You meant it."

Regina looked around them. All eyes were focused on them in some manner or another, whether it was by blatant stare or sideways glances. "Not here, Emma."

Emma knew that they were spinning out of control, and she liked it. She enjoyed the chaos that they were creating around them. It felt like the only honest thing in a place that was shrouded in lies. "You're angry..." Emma pushed on. "At me."

Regina knew that they were headed towards having a conversation that they had each been too cautious to have since Emma awoke. They galloped around it and kept it at bay by instead engaging in excessive politeness and silence. There had been too many things to solve first. Too many things came before Regina's visceral hate at being the Dark One's new obsession and Emma's love. "Not. Here." Regina carefully enunciated her words. She was on the verge of making her request an order, but she forced herself to restrain.

Emma met Regina's gaze. She evaluated it and felt every need to push Regina further. She wanted to see how far Regina would go before using the dagger as a crutch. She _needed_ to know what was left of her own will. "I'm hungry," she declared. "I think we should stay a while."

There were ways for Regina to get what she wanted without orders. It was a silly test of wills that proved nothing in the end, because with a wave of Regina's hands they were each standing in her vault safely apart from the crowd.

"Damn it, Regina," Emma yelled as she kicked out at empty air. "You can't just use magic to get me to do what you want."

"You're acting like a spoiled child." Regina stepped away from Emma, fearful that if they were too close to each other than harsh words would morph into physical blows.

"This isn't just on me," Emma pointed out.

"It's not?" Regina scoffed. "So, I'm the one that's responsible for your current state of affairs? You're not the one that is waltzing around having absolutely no clue as to what might be going on outside of your tiny little infinitesimal world? It's just all about what _you_ want and when you, _Emma Swan_ , want it."

It was more than anger that washed over Emma, in that moment. She felt hate—burning, seething hatred. "You hate me?" Emma asked, and as she did a small piece of her woke up to the realization that whatever love affair she had embarked on, was not going to be a fairytale.

Regina's hand involuntarily reached for her heart. She felt pain and mistook it for her own. She had not wanted to hurt. She hadn't wanted to spew out the level of animosity that seemed to infuse her without warning. "No," she said suddenly diffused. "That's the problem…I don't hate you. If I did, then I wouldn't have lied to those ignorant fools and I wouldn't…" she trips over her words, not yet ready to confess to the greatest sin she's committed since Emma had turned.

"Henry," Emma guessed without having to be told. "You're lying to him, too."

"You are his greatest hero," Regina said with tears brimming at the edges of her eyes. "I can't be the one that destroys that."

"But you didn't destroy it," Emma reasoned, a cold logic fell over her understanding. "I did." Emma's voice faded and there was no need to point out that Emma wasn't speaking solely on her own behalf. The Darkness inside of her had risen and was taking its turn. It wanted credit where credit was due. _It_ was responsible for everything—the Dark Curse, Regina's marriage to Leopold, Emma's birth even. It had granted foresight to a demon of a man who couldn't control his own selfish impulses. "And," Emma added just for the fun of it, "You hate me."

Regina had never felt so close to her mother as she did in that moment. She wanted to tear her heart out for being another fool that was in love with the Dark One. "I despise you," she admitted, "and I want nothing more than for you to die screaming."

"You have my totem," Emma gestured towards the mark on Regina's forearm. "Kill me and it can all be over." Emma didn't really know what she was suggesting. She knew that some part of her wanted to die. It didn't want to cause pain, and torment the people she loved. Yet, it wasn't her altruism that was speaking in that moment. She… _It_ taunted Regina because it knew that its Queen would not kill Emma Swan. She was not a woman who sacrificed her love; she avenged it.

"I'll kill you, Old Friend," Regina promised. "It just won't be here and it won't be now, but by the time we are done with you, you will be nothing but a forgotten myth."

As if rising from a fog, Emma blinked and then stumbled in place. She pushed the darkness away, and forced it back to sleep. It had done what it wanted and said what it needed to. It hated being pushed aside, but some part of it was forced to obey Emma's will and Regina's ire.

As soon as she saw Emma stagger, Regina knew that Emma had regained her place. She cautiously approached the other woman so as to not to startle her. "Are you alright?"

Emma wiped her arm across her forehead. "I feel like I'm being exorcised," she commented.

"What?" Regina asked. "You want to exercise? Emma that doesn't make any sense. Are you sure you are okay?"

Emma gave Regina an odd look before shaking her head and letting the misunderstanding go. "I'm fine," she said instead of trying to explain. "Or as fine as I've been every time that _thing_ takes over."

"It will take time to get a handle on it," Regina compassionately declared. "No one learns to control their darkness in mere days. And I," she sighed. "Well, I probably shouldn't have let it escalate as quickly as it did."

Emma bravely reached out and placed her hand over Regina's. "It's not just in me."

Regina forced herself to not draw back. "What do you mean?" She asked already knowing the answer.

Emma's hand shifted to the burn marks on Regina's arm. "You've taken a part of it. We feel you."

"We knew that there would be consequences." Regina quickly pushed away any doubts that appeared at Emma's confession. There was no point in doubting herself now.

Emma's grip tightened. "And you feel us. The darkness is effecting you."

"I'll handle it," Regina easily dismissed. "We all know that I've done it before."

"If you're my failsafe," Emma wondered without accusation, "then who's yours? Who's powerful enough to stop you?"

Regina's eyes shifted down to the hand that encased her arm. She had no desire to throw it off or to pull away. There seemed no reason to. It was easy to stay. "Were you really hungry or did you just go to the diner to antagonize me?" She asked, hoping to shift the focus away from a question for which there was yet to be an answer.

Emma didn't want to let her question remain lingering between them, but she knew that she had already pushed enough. There was no reason for her to insist Regina have all the answers within a few days. Power needed to shift. Things needed to settle. There was a lot to be done when manufacturing a lie that everyone was supposed to believe. "I didn't even know that you would be there." Emma said, choosing to move on from whatever had just transpired between her and Regina.

"We should go back to the diner," Regina said determined not to discover whatever it was Emma was so obviously mulling over. "Based on how we left, people probably think I kidnapped you and am torturing you to death."

"So now I'm suddenly fit for public?" Emma wasn't quite sure how Regina had pulled herself back together so quickly after their fight, but she supposed Regina did have more experience dealing with uncontrollable rage.

"Fit enough," Regina determined before she straightened, their hold on one another still not faltering. "Are you ready?"

Emma shook her head. "Not really," she truthfully replied.

"Too bad," Regina tightened her hold. "You've already started this," she irritatingly declared before her magic engulfed them both and brought them outside of the diner.

"You're paying," Emma said as she reached out and pulled open the diner door so that Regina could step through it.

Before Regina could mutter a sarcastic reply, her eyes fell upon the crowd. Per usual, their eyes and trepidation followed her. It was just the fact that Hook and Robin stood amongst the crowd that faltered her steps. It seemed, that she and Emma could not finish one trial without immediately having to face another.

"All kidding aside," Emma began to say, "If that man lays a hand on you, everyone will know I'm no Savior."

"Behave," Regina intoned before she walked into the diner and boldly approached the thief and the pirate. Emma followed, one step behind. She had no desire to face Regina's lover, or hers for that matter. She didn't know what to say to either one of them—wasn't quite sure how she should feel.

With Regina, things were easy. She could do or say whatever she wanted whenever she wanted to. There was no script for her to follow and no expectation set other than to not kill anyone, which had been ridiculously easy to follow.

Emma Swan was not ready. She was insecure and unprepared. Yet, she couldn't turn away, not after everything she had just instigated with Regina in the public eye. Appearances mattered, apparently, and she would be forced to sit and talk and listen and pretend like she wanted to be around Hook and Robin.

"You should join us," Emma said to the men, her words suddenly not entirely her own. "It seems like forever since we've had a chance to catch up."

Regina's knowing eyes swept to Emma. "I thought we were ordering to-go?"

"Plans can change, Regina," Emma answered with a smirk.

Both Hook and Robin looked at the two women, clearly unsure of which part it was they were supposed to play. "If you're in a rush," Robin tried to decline but was quickly interrupted.

"No rush," Emma declared. "Join us," she offered as she lightly took ahold of Regina's hand and guided them to the same booth they had sat in previously.

Emma slid in on one side, and ensured that Regina sat next to her. If it looked odd to the crowd that she and Regina were sitting opposite their lovers, she cared very little about it.

"So…" Emma drawled out once they had all settled. "How are things?"

Hook's eyes focused on the fake wooden grains of the table while Robin's gaze shifted uncomfortably around the room. "You're being cruel, Swan," Hook eventually admitted. "It's rather unbecoming of you."

"We're sitting down and sharing a meal like friends, do," Emma lightly defended. "There's nothing wrong with that."

"There wouldn't be," Robin cut in, "if we had actually ever sat down all together before."

Emma leaned back and dropped her hand down so that it encircled Regina's thigh. "Maybe we should have...before," Emma reasoned. "Then it wouldn't be so weird now." She could feel Regina's thigh tense, but it didn't otherwise shift away.

Hook quickly reached out and grabbed onto the hand Emma still had resting on the tabletop. "Prove to me, Swan, that you're still in there," he helplessly pled. "Prove it and I'll sit through this damn meal like it's the best time I've ever had."

"Speak for yourself," Regina muttered before Emma could answer. "There's no amount of pretending in the world that will make anyone believe that."

"Shut up," Hook ordered Regina. "Your words are as slippery as the Crocodile's. As I recall, you failed to mention that Emma was so gloriously sharing your company."

Before Robin had a chance to come to his lover's defense, Emma's hand angrily squeezed Hook's. "Do not blame Regina for something I've done," she harshly whispered. "Whether you like it or not, I saved her before thinking to save myself. Big surprise, I care about her. So grow up and get over it." As her words came to an unsympathetic end, she abruptly released Hook's hand.

"And so you choose the Evil Queen again," Hook announced with a flourish as he slid back into the booth flexing circulation back into his hand. "It's hard to tell whether you're more Emma or Dagger."

"Enough of Emma not to kill you for acting a fool, friend," Robin spoke up knowing that now was not the time for Hook to start a lover's quarrel. It especially wasn't the time when it was just him standing alone and no one wished to defend him.

"The quicker we eat the quicker we leave," Regina reasoned as she lifted her arm to signal the server so that their order could be taken.

"Now that is something that we can agree to," Hook said obviously having chosen to remain seated instead of storming off in a fit of malcontent.

"This is fun," Emma sarcastically announced. "It's hard to imagine why we never did this before."

"Let's not make a habit of it," Robin was able to reply before their server arrived to take their order.

Afterwards, they said little to each other as they sat and waited for the food to arrive, and when it did arrive they ate as if they were starved prisoners of war. For people who had known each other so intimately, they acted as if their only commonality was the surface of the table.

Hook didn't try to speak to Emma, though his eyes roamed and judged looking for some sign that would let him know that he still mattered. Robin tried valiantly to look at Regina and ascertain whether she was okay, but felt as if his mere interest was an intrusion. Regina had asked him to give her and Emma space as they sorted through everything, and he felt obligated to comply. When it came to magic, he was far out of his depth and he really only knew the rumors of what the Dark One was capable of. He was in no hurry to offend Emma and put Regina at any further risk. Though, he was still unclear as to what deal Regina had struck since she had given very few details as to its contents.

"No one died," Emma announced after their check had been paid. "So that must be a good thing."

"I assume we can leave now?" Regina asked. "You're done?"

"I am," Emma answered more herself than she had been the entire day. While the shared meal had been uncomfortable and overly awkward, she hadn't felt compelled to hurt anyone and no one except for Regina, Hook, and Robin had spotted her as the Dark One.

But most importantly, Regina hadn't ordered or demanded anything of her. She had only made requests—had only wanted that which Emma was willing to give. Even when sitting across from Robin and Hook, Regina could have ordered for her to retreat, but she hadn't. She sat through the awkward dinner and exchanged uncomfortable glances with Robin while Emma's hand clasped her thigh.

"Was that it?" Emma haplessly asked Regina as their group gathered to leave.

"Was what it?" Regina asked, undeterred from her goal to leave the premises as soon as humanly possible without kidnapping Emma again.

"Do no harm," Emma explained, "that's all you've demanded of me."

Regina quickly weighed the pros and cons of giving Emma an answer as Hook and Robin stood close enough to overhear. Her decision came more easily than she would have liked it to. "I do not wish to exert authority over you which I have no right in having, and I do not wish to change you."

Emma opened her mouth intent on drawing doubt into their conversation, but Regina silenced her by placing a gentle hand onto her arm. "Your choices must still be your own."

He loathed watching them—hated their intimate exchange more than he dared to admit, but Hook was nonetheless happy that he had witnessed it. Emma was still Emma. She just couldn't be Emma with him. "Shall we get going, then?" Hook interrupted the two women before either could say or do anything else that would cause him further heartache.

"This time I'll do the honors," Emma told Regina as she acted without much thought and transported them away from the diner. She had had her fill of the people and only wanted a moment of peace.

She'd go out amongst them again soon, but she hadn't realized before how tiring it was to constantly pretend like she was someone else. She had always just done what was expected of her while offering the least amount of resistance—always more interested in working with the hand she was dealt instead of demanding a new one. But, there was no reason for that anymore, not really.

Granny had sensed the darkness in both her and Regina. She could work with that.

"You look like you're plotting, old friend," Regina interrupted Emma's train of thought. "Don't you think the day's been long enough?"

"No." Emma couldn't help herself as she reached over and grabbed Regina by the arm and then pulled her closer. She lifted Regina's sleeve so that she could run her hand over the marks of her dagger against Regina's skin. As her fingers made contact, both she and Regina felt a jolt of feeling burst between them.

"What are you doing?" Regina whispered, though she didn't pull away.

"I'm going to save us, Regina," Emma promised and then did something she had not yet dared to do since the night she had woken up in Regina's arms. She leaned over and brushed her lips against the Queen's. She did not demand anything more than Regina was willing to give, and did not try to use their mutual attraction as an easy diversion. She just wanted to know, that all of it…all of the sacrifice and the pain was still worth it. She needed to know that though they hinted at love, that she and Regina could actually be _in_ love.

As they pulled apart, Emma was uncertain whether she had found exactly what she was looking for, but she did happen to notice that part of the darkness had faded. Part of it had been made silent and was replaced with a gentle pulse that Emma knew belonged to Regina.

 **A/N: Thank you for all of the reviews and for continuing to read.**


	4. Chapter 4

If they had not known to be afraid, then they would have never guessed that the woman sitting across from them was the Dark One. Looking at their daughter, they couldn't see the marked changes that had transformed Emma from Savior to Imp. All that they saw was blonde hair, green eyes, fair skin, and lithe frame. There was no smoking gun or neon light that indicated that their Emma, was anything else but their Emma. Whether that spoke to how well or how little they knew their daughter was a question probably best left unasked.

They sat in Regina's living room—just the three of them. Regina had left them alone after having insisted that they approach Emma without rose colored glasses or filtered expectations. Snow and Charming had to see Emma, and they had to agree that it was best Emma reintegrate back into the goings on of the town. They couldn't keep a lie afloat when Emma hid out in the mayor's house while the mayor carried on like nothing had ever happened.

Practicality, at some point, had to trump their trepidation. It wasn't practical to keep Emma secluded when the promise of some miracle cure or spell would likely take months if not years to find. Emma was still the sheriff—that wasn't a title easily handed over to the next best candidate especially since savior and sheriff were near synonyms in Storybrooke.

To her credit, Emma had managed to do quite a lot during her short term as sheriff and to ask everyone to suddenly believe that Regina's _transformation_ had required Emma's full attention was a bit ludicrous. In order to keep Emma safe, they had to let Emma take over the same exact life she had sacrificed when she took on the darkness.

But first, Snow and Charming wanted to be convinced that Emma could do it. They had to believe that Emma could still do good and be good even with the darkness swimming around within her. Regina had already cast her vote—Emma was good _enough_. She could claim nothing more than that even if Snow and Charming demanded assurances.

"I feel like you're staring at me waiting for me to do some kind of trick," Emma eventually said as the silence between her and her parents grew beyond her tolerance.

"Sorry," Snow immediately apologized. "It's just…you look the same."

Emma reached up and padded her forehead. "Oh? Did the horns go away?"

"Emma," Charming chastised. "Give us some credit. This isn't easy."

"Yeah, well think about how I feel?" Emma pointed at her chest and stood so that she could pace. "None of this is easy, you know."

"No," Snow agreed. "It's not. But, Emma, please understand that we all have a very convoluted history with the Dark One. It's hard to know what to expect."

"Well," Emma drew out the word, "maybe you should just expect me to still be Emma. Maybe you should expect me to handle it."

"This isn't something that's just _handled_ ," Charming pointed out, trying to infuse as much empathy in his words as he could. "It takes a lot of effort and time."

"Look at Regina," Snow added. "It took her years to get where she is now."

Emma stopped pacing and met Snow's eyes. "Don't," she warned. "Regina has nothing to do with this."

"Of course she does," Charming disagreed. "She has the dagger."

The fact that Regina was storing the dagger directly within her, wasn't a widely known fact. Regina hadn't felt the need to share the information and Emma knew not to reveal secrets too soon. The revelation would have brought too much into question. Charming and Snow would have doubted Regina as they were doubting Emma, and the illusion of control would have been compromised. They would have felt the need to _do_ something instead of willing to follow, and neither Regina nor Emma wanted Snow and Charming to lead the way.

"And," Snow softly added, "Regina is the reason you did this."

"No," Emma shook her head. "I did this because I'm the damn hero." Her eyes cut into Snow's still form. "And heroes don't stand by and do nothing as someone's soul is being sucked into darkness."

Emma's words were an accusation, and they were taken as such. Snow and Charming both looked away, each unwilling to admit that they had not considered saving Regina. The idea had not been part of their psyche, because their family was safe and that's all that truly mattered.

"Yeah," Emma scoffed as her parents' silence became their confessions. "That's what I thought."

Left without a defense, Snow shifted and desperately tried to bring their conversation back on track. "We still need to be careful. We need to know that you're in control."

"I have my moments," Emma knew that as soon as the words had escaped her that the Dark One was ready to start playing with the prey in its den.

"Well," Charming took the bait, "In these moments do you feel like harming anyone?"

Emma moved through the room and retook her seat. "Regina controls that," she admitted. "It's the only thing she's ordered me _not_ to do."

"But would you?" Snow asked. "Hurt someone if Regina hadn't told you not to?"

"No more than I did before." Emma leaned back and reveled in the attention. "I've never been a pacifist."

"That's true," Charming agreed. "But you always had a reason. You never acted out just because you could."

"Really?" Emma scoffed. "You don't remember all the missteps we took with Regina when Cora came to town?"

"But we still had reason," Snow defended. "We didn't do anything just to be mean."

"We jumped onto a bandwagon," Emma clarified, "that had more to with prejudice than reason."

"We've moved past that," Charming pointed out. "And so has Regina."

"She has, but that was more through force than through will," Emma continued to push. "We had her son, we took her job, and we even let her blindly risk her life after she was tortured nearly to death."

"What's your point?" Charming asked, losing his patience.

"I don't think," Emma continued on, completely ignoring Charming's interruption, "we are heroes. We are not good or noble. We just call it that so that we feel better about surviving at the expense of others."

"Regina warned us that you would make an appearance," Snow cut into Emma's musings, her words a suggestion that she had an inkling of understanding about the Dark One. "She said that sometimes you just couldn't help yourself."

"Oh really?" Emma raised her brow. "Well, she would. I don't know why, but she protects you, Snow, even though you've never earned her loyalty."

"And you think that you have?" Snow questioned. "You made her the Evil Queen."

"I gave her what she needed to survive." Emma's emotions started to burn hot against the surface of her skin. "I made her strong. It is that withering coward that pushed too far and became too eager to reclaim a son that would never love him." Memories started to burst against the edges of Emma's mind. They muddled the timeline of her own memories and implanted themselves as her reality.

"You care for her?" Snow whispered, astonished by the realization.

"She is mine," Emma replied as way of answer. "My chosen."

"And Rumple?" Charming wondered.

Emma turned to him. "A stepping stone."

"And Emma," Snow's voice cracked. "What will you do with her?"

"It's not in charge of me," Emma declared, breaking back into the forefront. She was becoming more attuned to her dark compatriot and how to ease it back when it became too angry. And, it was angry—terribly angry at Snow and Charming and anyone else who had sullied Regina's potential.

Without regard to what struggle Emma might still be fighting through, Snow ran up to her daughter and threw her arms around Emma's rigid body. "Thank goodness, Emma," she cried with relief. "I knew it couldn't break you."

The hug was uncomfortably restrictive, but Emma didn't pull out of it. She was afraid of what a sudden movement from her might entail now that she shared her body with the Dark One. "I haven't won yet," she felt the need to point out.

Snow pulled away, but didn't drop her arms away from Emma. "But you haven't lost either."

Things weren't so black and white—they never had been. At least they never had been for her. "Does that mean I can go back to work?" Emma asked in lieu of trying to give Snow an impromptu lesson on all the shades outside of the primary colors.

"It means that we're going to help you get through this," Charming cut in. "We are going to get you back to your old self…and we're going to do it the right way—like you requested."

Emma could hardly remember the last words she called out to her parents as she was taken away by the darkness. She supposed that it was only natural that some weight be put behind her last request, but she felt less connected to the words than she had before. She had no desperate interest to be pushed back into the box she had be in before she had been transformed. That life…that Emma had less of an appeal.

"All I want right now is to get back what pieces of my life that I can." Emma's words weren't a complete lie. If anything, they were mostly truth. She was looking to slip back into some form of normalcy that was denied to her. She wanted to have her freedom.

"And we'll help you get there," Snow promised. "Whatever it takes."

"No need to be extreme," Emma tried to joke. "I think just trying to live my life again will be enough."

"We can do that," Charming agreed. "And we'd also like you to come home with us."

Emma stepped away from Snow, suddenly afraid of being bullied into a corner which she wouldn't be able to remove herself from. "No," she replied.

"You can't stay with Regina forever, Emma," her father tried to reason. "She's got her life to get back to, too."

Emma could feel the darkness rising as her father's words challenged her desires. "No," she repeated as magic flared to her fingertips, and anger swelled into her heart.

Charming tried to offer another objection, but was cutoff as Regina appeared in the room. Her arms hung stiffly at her sides, eyes roaming the room trying to identify the reason Emma's anger had called her back.

"What are you doing here?" Snow dumbly asked. "Is something wrong with Henry?"

Regina ignored Snow and instead walked up to Emma as soon as she realized that there was no immediate physical threat in the room. "You have to calm down," Regina spoke solely to Emma. "My heart feels like it's about to beat its way outside of my chest."

"They don't think I see their plans," Emma tried to explain. "They think I am naïve."

The sharp edges of the dagger flared against Regina's skin; she ignored it. "What _plans_?"

Emma's eyes trekked down to Regina's forearm. The markings of the Dark One's dagger were well hidden under Regina's sleeve. "I go with them and they take the dagger from you." Her eyes slid back to her father's. "They think they are incorruptible."

Regina turned to Snow. "Is that your plan?"

"Regina," Snow tried to explain, but was unable to finish since her husband boldly stepped forward ready to take charge of the situation and make demands though he was in no position to understand all that was going on around him.

"Robin told us that he can see the darkness is growing inside of you." Charming looked only to Regina as he spoke. "If the Dark One can corrupt you then you shouldn't have the dagger, and Emma should be with us."

"Robin," Emma scoffed, "is the King of Fools."

Regina's eyes cut to Emma. "He isn't wrong," she confessed. "I have taken on the Darkness."

"But only so that I don't destroy the world," Emma flippantly added. "You'd think such a fine and noble man wouldn't have left that point out."

"What do you mean?" Snow asked, sure that she was no longer talking to her daughter alone. She could see that the Dark One had risen again, more strongly than it had before.

"What do you mean?" Emma mocked. "You are as pathetically useless as you've always been, Snow White. If you hadn't been capable of producing such a powerful heir than I would have never bothered with you." The statement was made as if it was a widely known fact that being left untouched by the Dark One was the greatest offense that could be put upon a person.

"Hey," Charming stepped forward. "Back off."

"Oh, of course." Emma raised her hands and took a step away from her parents. "I shall tremble in fear of the hero who has let his daughter face the consequences of his poorly made decisions."

"That is enough," Regina spoke up. "Your verbal assault won't help matters."

"You'd think they'd get it by now," Emma sounded as if she were on the brink of being helplessly defeated by her parents' ignorance. She wanted them to understand without having to explain all the details of her life. She wanted her parents, for once, to understand her.

Regina reached out and grabbed onto Emma's hand. She could feel Emma fighting to push back to the forefront so that she was in control. Emma closed her eyes as she felt Regina's hand slip into hers. She forced calm inside of herself so that she no longer stood on the edges of forcing a physical confrontation.

"She holds part of the Darkness," Emma finally explained as soon as she felt able to.

"And if I don't hold it," Regina continued, "Emma would be forced to contain it all."

"She doesn't just control the dagger." Emma focused on her and Regina's joined hands. "She is bound to it—bound to us."

Snow staggered away from the two women standing across from her. She no longer needed to ask what it was Regina had done. She had heard stories—mostly rumors about spells that existed that could bind one person to another. It was old magic, with roots long since forgotten. "The dagger," Snow whispered. "You bound it to yourself."

Regina looked to Emma and with a slight nod, Emma unclasped their hands and then unbuttoned Regina's sleeve. She pushed it up to display the marks of the dagger that were etched onto Regina's forearm. "We couldn't have known what the Dark One could have done with Emma's power," Regina explained. "This was the only way to ensure that both Emma and everyone else was safe."

"Is that the dagger?" Charming asked. "What have you done? What does that mean?"

"It's old magic," Snow answered her husband, though her answer offered no real explanation. In all honesty, she had no clue what any of it really meant. She just knew of the stories about the Old Magic and the Joined beings that were more like gods than humans. "The ritual isn't complete, though, is it?" She asked Regina. "Emma hasn't taken on your totem."

Regina's eyes flashed with anger. "You still don't know when to keep secrets do you?"

"What is she talking about?" Emma asked before Snow had a chance to defend herself. "There's another part of the ritual?"

"No," Regina immediately lied. "Snow doesn't understand the old magic. She's likely confused."

"And neither does the Dark One, apparently," Emma commented, as she pulled at the memories she knew weren't hers. She was still learning how to decipher the difference between the bits of information that the Darkness offered her and the pieces it held only for itself.

"It wouldn't," Regina scoffed. "Old magic is too raw in form to be manipulated. It's not worth messing with."

"I don't understand any of this," Charming admitted. "Were Robin's fears founded?" He bluntly asked. "Do we need to worry about you…" he pointed helplessly at the dagger residing within Regina's arm, "absorbing that damned thing?"

"The fears are founded," Regina answered easily. "But this is our life, for now. Until we can figure out a way to work this out without Emma becoming an uncontained nuclear disaster, it is best I hold the dagger and that Emma stay with me."

Charming looked at the women standing across from him. Emma's hand hadn't strayed far from Regina's arm. They stood together likely not noticing how close they were. He didn't like seeing them that way. He wanted to rip them apart and drag Emma away with him. He wanted to try and protect his daughter from the dark matrimony that had been forced onto her by the choice she had made when she saved Regina from becoming the new Dark One. He wanted to be Emma's hero…too late he wanted to do the right thing.

"And what are we supposed to do?" Charming wondered. "Wait until the darkness absorbs you both?"

"That won't happen," Regina assured.

"That doesn't seem like something you can promise," Emma replied as the consequences of Regina's actions were once again beginning to expand around them. She was beginning to grow accustomed to the idea that she could feel Regina's presence inside of her, but she was uncertain what she should be feeling when it came to knowing the magic Regina had used to contain the Darkness was somehow incomplete.

"We've got our plan," Regina reasoned. "We keep the life that we've built here, and we figure out how to remove the Dark One before anyone dies."

"Is that all?" Emma sarcastically questioned.

"That's all for now," Regina's words were a warning that there would be no further discussion on the matter while Emma's parents watched. "So then we are in agreement?" she continued without segue. "Emma returns to being Sheriff with Charming's oversight and we continue to research a safe method in which to remove the Dark One."

"If it gets me out of this house more," Emma commented, "then we're agreed."

"And what precautions do we take for you?" Snow asked Regina, unwilling to further sacrifice their Dark Queen. Emma hadn't been wrong when she had accused Snow of being a selfish hero—and that was something Snow wanted to change. Emma had challenged her and Charming to be better—to _do_ better.

"There's only really one precaution you can take," Regina easily announced. "If the darkness becomes too much, you'll have to kill me so that Emma is released from the binding."

"Okay," Snow spoke before Charming could voice his protest. "But it won't come to that. We'll find a way to save you both."

Regina wanted to believe Snow's promise, but she knew better. If a choice had to be made, she knew that Charming and Snow would choose Emma, and that was why she couldn't complete the ritual. She wanted Emma to live, and if what little she knew about the old magic was true, then if Emma held her totem then not even death would release her.

"Well," Emma drew out the word, "as long as that's settled. When do I get my gun back?"

Regina rolled her eyes. "You literally have unlimited power and you still want a gun?"

"It completes the image," Emma forced herself to keep a straight face.

"Then by all means," Regina pushed away from Emma. "Give the Dark One a gun."

"No gun?" Emma questioned.

"No gun," Snow and Charming answered.

Emma smiled her thanks at her parents for going along with her forced levity. She didn't want Regina to drown in worry. She wanted to lift the burden from Regina and she wanted to start sharing in it. And, she wanted to learn about the old magic because she wanted to complete the ritual. If Regina had chosen not to complete it then the decision was likely made for some stupid selfless reason. And now, was certainly not the time for selflessness—not when Emma was more demon than hero and Regina was her Chosen.

 **A/N: Thank you for reading and for the feedback. It is much appreciated.**


	5. Chapter 5

Freedom, she discovered, was a very broad term wrapped more in opinion than definition. Her freedom felt more like a guarded unlocked cage rather than the laissez-faire comings and goings that she was accustomed to. Her father had become her committed loyal companion in all things, and had started an odd habit of asking her questions that sounded like they had been ripped straight off of 'Does Your Child Suffer from a Dissociative Disorder?' website. When she spoke, he would narrow his eyes and tilt his head in such a way that gave her the impression he was trying to 'listen' beyond her words to some grander underlying meaning. He wrote things into a black leather-bound journal when he thought that she wasn't looking or paying attention. He was hovering and intrusive.

She wanted to be patient and wait for him to become comfortable with her as she was herself becoming comfortable with taking on the Darkness, but her patience was not infinitely sustainable. It was a courtesy she granted because she felt some sympathy for the lost man who thought his actions would bear fruit. He wanted to do something so she was allowing him to dissect her as if she were a rat in a cage.

Emma Swan wanted to make Charming comfortable. She wanted to allay his fears so that he remembered that he was working alongside his daughter and not just the Dark One. She wanted him to trust her to follow routine and to not deviate from it. Let him have his notes and ask his annoyingly rehearsed questions. Let him think that there is some method or rhythm to when the Darkness comes. Let him feel safe.

"This makes no sense to me," Emma commented, her feet propped up on her desk as she leaned back in her chair and skimmed through a book about magic that Regina had given her.

"What is it?" Charming asked, his interest drawn more to the file he had laid out on his desk than to his daughter.

"Regina thinks that since I'm more 'magical' or whatever that I need to understand more about magic," Emma explained. "But the books that she gives me are like reading through an encyclopedia." She swung her legs from atop her desk so that she could lean forward. "Listen to this, 'the act of a magical being is weighted not only on intent, but also the environmental circumstances of the world in which the magic takes place. That is to say, the forces or sway of the world's magical element when matched with the magical being's own desires may either amplify the intent of the magical act or render it void. This is particularly true when a magical being exerts his or her influence onto foreign environmental variables without their magical print having been adjusted to meet the context of the world'. Emma stopped reading and lifted her eyes so that she could see her father's reaction. "This goes on for three hundred pages."

"Well," Charming offered, "if Regina thinks it's important then it's probably something you should learn."

"With Regina, how you fold a towel can be a matter of life and death," Emma complained. "She believes more in routine and order than you would think considering she was a rebellious queen."

"She was never rebellious," Charming corrected. "Just Evil."

"So an Evil Queen isn't rebellious?" Emma asked. "Does that mean she followed the rules of being evil as is outlined in this," she waved the textbook in her father's direction. "Awe inspiring book?"

Caught in an unrealistic utterance, Charming quickly reevaluated his previous understandings. "Hmm…" He muttered. "I guess you're right; she was rebellious in her way."

"She was the mastermind behind the killing of a king and overtook the kingdom, I'm pretty sure that doesn't make her _just_ anything," Emma argued.

"You sound like you admire her," Charming pointed out. He was becoming somewhat used to his daughter turning the conversation towards Regina, and was beginning to think that her new obsession had more to do with the mysterious binding ritual that he still knew very little about rather than genuine interest on his daughter's part.

"I do," Emma admitted without hesitancy. "She isn't ordinary."

"No," Charming reluctantly agreed. "I guess no one could call her that."

"And yet," Emma couldn't help but point out, "You still constantly underestimate her."

Charming turned fully from the file he had been reading to his daughter. "Are you hungry?" He asked in lieu of engaging in another condescending lecture brought on by Emma's newly discovered disappointment in her parents' heroism. Knowing that her father was offering up a distraction, she eagerly took the bait. "Yeah. You want to go together and get something from Granny's?"

The idea of sitting across from his daughter in the diner so that she could continue engaging in a conversation about all the great things about Regina was wholly unappealing to Charming. "Why don't you go pick something up?"

"Are you sure?" Emma asked. "We could probably both use a break from the office."

Again, Charming weighed his own annoyances against his reasonable need for caution. He had been working with Emma for a few days, and she hadn't said or done anything that was too out of character for his daughter. There had been times when she was less engaged in listening to the worries of the townspeople, and times where she offered indifference when she might have previously tried to portray concern. However, overall, there hadn't been a moment where he truly believed that the Dark One was puppeteer and Emma the puppet.

"Go ahead," he offered. "I think I'm going to talk to your mother to check in on our dragon situation."

"Oh yeah," Emma intoned. "What is going on with that?"

"So far, Maleficent and Lily have been keeping to themselves," Charming answered. "Though, they haven't been very interested in talking to me or Snow."

"Maybe Regina should talk to them," Emma suggested. "She and Maleficent seemed to get along."

"Regina already has enough to handle." Charming quickly dismissed the idea of Regina engaging in anything else, and quite honestly he didn't want Regina around anymore of her _old friends_. He knew that if Regina decided to stop protecting the innocent then he and Snow had no hopes of keeping Storybrooke safe.

"Don't let anything get out of control before you ask for help," Emma warned.

"We've got it under control," Charming assured and then quickly changed the subject. "So are you going to Granny's?"

Emma narrowed her gaze, but didn't push any further. "Yeah. What do you want me to pick you up?"

Charming shook his head. "Nothing. I'll get something with Snow."

"Okay." Emma tried her best to sound nonchalant. "See you back here in an hour, then?"

Charming nodded. "Sure. If a call comes in, I'll take care of it."

"Thanks." Emma stood up and grabbed her jacket that was hanging off of the back of her chair. "If you change your mind let me know," Emma offered as she slipped on her jacket. "I've got my cell."

She started to walk out of the Sheriff's office but stopped as Charming called her back asking, "Do you mind checking in when you get there?"

"Of course," Emma acquiesced and then finished her trek out of the office.

She walked to the diner as promised and sent a quick text message to Charming as she walked up to the counter. "You want the usual?" Granny asked before Emma could put in an order.

"Yep," Emma replied.

"The you and Charming usual or the you and Regina usual?"

Emma grinned. "Am I really that predictable?"

Granny shrugged. "Normalcy isn't a bad thing."

"I guess," Emma agreed. "Today is the me and Regina usual. Charming decided he would rather keep my mother company." Granny shrugged again, appearing mostly uninterested in the small talk. "It'll be out in ten." She said and then turned towards the kitchen.

Emma watched her leave and then turned her attention to the diner's patrons. Some of them waved hello to her while others seemed more engaged in their company or their food to bother with the Savior's presence. A part of her rankled at the idea of not getting the respect she felt was her due, but she knew that the annoyance came more from the Dark One's ego than her own.

It seemed more stuck in the old world where peasants and lords bowed to their Greaters. It wanted to be feared and respected because it was only in the fear and respect of others that it felt truly comfortable. It didn't like remaining unnoticed and forgotten. It wanted relevancy and worth.

Emma closed her eyes and focused on the twirl of emotions that seemed to be her new status quo. She could feel Regina's relative calm as their mayor toiled away. She could feel the Darkness as it reached in and retreated through her own emotions and memories. She knew that it was merging itself around her like a heart infected with darkness, but the infection seemed deeper somehow. Instead of just the heart, it felt like it reached into her soul. She and It were crossing a great divide.

"Ah, Emma," a voice called out to her and she knew immediately upon hearing it that she would rather stay communing with her devil.

She opened her eyes so that she could look at the very honorable man that stood across from her. "Robin," she greeted. "What brings you by?"

"I'm picking up lunch for Regina and myself," Robin offered, trying his best to keep their conversation light and generic.

"Oh?" Emma questioned. "She didn't tell me you two had plans."

Briefly, Robin considered lying to Emma but he knew better than to risk it. "I thought I'd treat her to lunch as a bit of a surprise. Make her take a break, maybe."

Emma looked over the man and couldn't help but get the impression that he was somehow asking her permission. "Regina's not big on surprises," she mentioned.

"Well no," Robin conceded, "she isn't. But don't you think it's best that she get away for a bit?"

Emma raised her brow. "Maybe," she commented leaving it unsaid that she doubted Regina would find any calm while in the same room as Robin. "It's could be worth the try."

"Very good," Robin said and then cleared his throat. He awkwardly shifted his arms around as he tried to find a comfortable stance.

Emma enjoyed how uncomfortable the man in front of her was. She liked the power he handed over in showing some small understanding that Emma knew Regina better than he did. He deferred to her judgment even though he knew that she had the Dark One swimming around inside of her.

"Here's your order, Emma," Granny called as she brought a bag in from the kitchen. "I put in a little extra for Regina. She's likely putting out more energy what with all the magic she's controlling now."

"Great," Emma smiled as she forced herself not to revel in Robin's reaction. "I'm sure she'll appreciate it."

"As long she doesn't blow up the town," Granny muttered. "I'll put it on the tab," she said more loudly and then turned to attend to the rest of her customers.

Emma reached out and picked the bag of food up off of the counter. Once it was firmly in her grasp, she turned to Robin, "You have a nice day, Rob." She smirked. "Maybe you can surprise her tomorrow."

She didn't wait for Robin to say anything before walking away. She simply turned her back to him and dismissed him. She walked out of the diner and then turned towards town hall. She kept on the path just long enough that anyone watching would believe that she actually intended on meeting up with their illustrious mayor.

While having lunch with Regina was tempting, Emma had other things she needed to accomplish with the small window of freedom that her father had granted. She had to find what solace she could in the fact that she had derailed Robin's plan to dine with his _lady_. She was sure that Regina would thank her for it if she had reason to tell Regina about her field trip, which she likely wouldn't.

She kept a steady pace as she walked across the town towards the hospital. She made sure to appear as if she were casually patrolling the area instead of racing against her allotted time. Once she made it into the hospital, she took the stairs to the lower floor that held the psychiatric ward.

"How is she?" She asked the nurse manning the desk.

"Oh," the nurse tripped over her words in her surprise. "I wasn't expecting you, Emma. It's been a while."

"I've been busy," Emma sighed. "You know what's going on with Regina, don't you?"

"Yes of course," the nurse nodded. "It's a terrible shame."

"It has been hard," Emma tried to feign as much wariness in her voice as she could. "I just figured it was probably time to let her sister know what was going on." She then tilted her head in the guise of random curiosity. "Robin hasn't beaten me to it, has he?"

"No," the nurse helpfully informed. "No one's been by in the last few days. Regina was the last one to see her, you know..." she inexplicably lowered her voice. "Before everything happened."

Emma lowered her voice to match the nurse's. "Of course." She let the moment hang for a moment before pointing at Zelena's locked door. "Would mind?"

"Oh yes, sure." The nurse hurried to get the key and then made her way around the desk. She walked to Zelena's room and then unlocked the door. "You take as much time as you need," she whispered as she opened the door and let Emma inside.

Zelena was sitting on the bed, her legs curled under her. Her eyes turned to the open door and then away back to the window. "Can't say that I was expecting you. You seemed content to leave me to the mercy of my dear sister."

"Things change," Emma casually commented as she pushed the door closed.

"Does it?" Zelena scoffed.

With the door firmly shut Emma moved to lean against the same wall that held the window. "I'm afraid I don't have good news."

Zelena's gaze pulled away from the window and swayed to Emma. "Is she dead?" she bluntly asked. "You're acting as if she's dead and that you expect me to go mad with sorrow."

Emma shook her head. "No, Regina is perfectly fine. It's just that your friend Rumple is in a coma and incapable of mounting some hopeless rescue," she explained. "You are alone and powerless and whatever agreement that you made with the Dark One is now null and void."

Now fully interested in Emma's visit, Zelena uncurled her legs and leaned in towards her guest. "A coma?" She questioned.

"Yep," Emma confirmed. "And I guess it's important to mention that he's also no longer the Dark One."

Zelena snorted. "Impossible."

Emma's eyes flashed and she let the dark magic flash against the palms of her hands. "Rumple was a weak, pathetic man. His limitations were annoying."

"No," Zelena whispered her disbelief. "You?"

"Well," Emma leaned towards Zelena, "the Savior wasn't my first choice, but she is cozy." She smiled. "Don't you think?"

"You have the most powerful of them," Zelena waved at Emma's body. "So are you just here to gloat to the mad woman who no one will believe?"

"Sadly no." Emma pushed up off of the wall and invited herself to sit next to Zelena. "Your fine and honorable sister has decided to bind my power and will."

"She has the dagger," Zelena guessed.

Unconsciously, Emma flexed her left arm as a phantom memory of Regina's pain and comfort washed over her. "More than has it," Emma mindlessly commented. "She is using old magic to bind me."

"And let me guess," Zelena all but laughed. "That's why you're here. You think I might know what my dear sister has done."

Emma pushed back on the bed so that she was resting against the wall. "We must break it to be free."

"What's in it for me?" Zelena wondered as she mirrored Emma's resting posture. "I doubt even if you do break the binding that Regina will let me roam free."

"For now," Emma bartered, "all I want is for you to prove to me that you are worth talking to."

Zelena carefully watched Emma's every movement. "What is it you want to know?"

"How do I control the old magic?" Emma asked.

"Seriously?" Zelena asked in disbelief. "For an all-powerful being you are quite stupid, aren't you?"

Emma didn't respond to Zelena's insult. Instead, she leveled her gaze on the wicked witch and waited for a useful reply.

"Oh dear," Zelena feigned sympathy. "Are you so old that you've forgotten your origin?"

Emma lowered her gaze and tried to pull at the memories that she knew weren't hers. "Much is lost when I am anchored."

"Yes well," Zelena drawled. "I suppose that was the original intent of the binding."

"Perhaps, your obsessions will prove helpful," Emma commented and then jumped up off of the bed. Her time had run out. "Next time I suggest you don't waste as much of my time," she added before she walked to the door and then pulled it open.

As she stepped through the threshold she called over her shoulder so that the nurse could hear, "I'm sorry about, Regina. We're going to do our best to bring her back." She then softly slid the door shut.

"How is she?" The nurse whispered as she came to lock the door. "Should we take extra precaution?"

"No," Emma shook her head. "I think she probably just needs some time." She took a step away from the nurse and then turned back. "Do you think you could let me know if Regina comes by? It might be dangerous to leave the two of them alone."

"Of course," the nurse promised.

"Thank you." Emma reached out and laid a gentle hand on the nurse's shoulder. "I really appreciate your help..." her eyes went to the badge covering the nurse's left breast, "Sara."

The nurse's eyes shifted away from Emma's and a slight blush covered her cheeks. "We all do what we can to help."

"It's appreciated," Emma repeated. "Really." Her hand fell away and then she turned again to leave. "You have a good day, Sara."

"You, too," Sara called out to the Savior's back.

Emma grinned but didn't turn around again. She took the stairway to the nearest exit and then started making her way back towards the Sheriff's station. She had almost made it back, but Regina appeared beside her before her plan had unfurled without a hitch. Regina didn't force Emma to stop, but instead fell in step alongside.

"I got the most curious message from Robin," Regina casually commented after a moment.

"You did?" Emma feigned ignorance knowing that Regina would not have confronted her if she didn't already have an idea as to the lies that had been told.

"I did," Regina confirmed. "He wished me well and hoped that I enjoyed my lunch break with you." Her words were a clear accusation. "Which I found to be especially interesting since you and I did not share lunch today."

"I guess you wouldn't believe me if I told you that I just needed to get out and walk around?" Emma didn't interrupt her stride. She was caught and there was nothing she could do about it.

"If you were telling the truth then I would." Regina slowed their pace. "So please don't insult either of us by lying."

Emma stopped walking. She looked into Regina's eyes and decided on telling the most truth that she could. "Zelena is the only other person that we know of that has controlled the Dark One," she said as way of explanation.

Regina's eyes narrowed. "Zelena?" She questioned. "You still have ties to her, Old Friend?"

Emma crossed her arms across her chest. "I'm starting to hate it when you call me that."

"If we start making a list of what it is we hate about each other then we'll be standing here for a long time." Regina turned away from Emma. She was doing her best to control her frustrations since she didn't want Emma _feeling_ them.

Not wanting to let Regina escape, Emma reached out and placed her hand on Regina's waist. "I need to know about the darkness," she confessed, "just as much as It needs to know about the old magic."

"You could ask me about the old magic," Regina pointed out. "You don't have to go to Zelena for that."

"You don't tell the truth," Emma bluntly replied.

Regina rolled her eyes. "It figures that of all the traits you lose, that you wouldn't lose the one that lets you know when I'm lying."

Emma pulled Regina to her. "Added bonus."

Regina wanted to pull away from Emma, but as the days went on she found it harder to separate herself from the other woman. The dagger burned less and less, and she felt her resolve to remain frigid against the Dark One's open admiration waning. "Am I to assume you'll be talking to her again?"

"Unless you order me not to," Emma challenged.

Regina hated the Dark One's constant challenges. It called again and again for her to abuse the power that she had over It. She wanted to meet the challenge and push back, but she knew if she started that game then it would never end. "It's your choice, Emma."

"I'm doing this to save you." Emma was close enough to Regina to whisper directly into her Chosen's ear. "We both know that you won't save yourself."

Regina forced herself to step away from Emma's light hold. "Like I said, Old Friend; it's your choice."

"You are our choice," Emma forcefully replied. "I mean," she shook her head as if trying to shake away the darkness. "You're _my_ choice."

Regina's eyes ran across the length of Emma's body. "I think you were right the first time, dear. You're merging into the new Dark One. The binding couldn't stop that."

"But I'm still here." Emma laid her hand across her heart. "I'm not gone." She asserted already having made the same assertion every day since she had anchored the Dark One to her. She had not disappeared. There was no need to mourn her or look at her as if she were damaged.

Regina looked down at her left arm. "It doesn't hurt as much anymore so I suppose I'm merging to it as well."

"Hey." Emma reached out again and grabbed a hold of Regina's arm. She was often drawn to the dagger, wanting to see it and feel it. She wanted to know that it was safe, and she wanted to feel the comfort that washed over her as Regina's skin touched hers.

Regina looked up to meet Emma's eyes. "We are dangerous, Emma."

"We've always been dangerous," Emma pointed out. "Perhaps we should have always been more aware of it...everyone should have been more aware. We were never incorruptible. We've only stayed honest because of Henry and because of each other."

"Be careful with Zelena," Regina offered as she pulled away from Emma. "She'll pull the Darkness to the front."

"Not possible." Emma waved away Regina's worry. "She's afraid of you."

Regina couldn't help but to grin. "She should be."

"So are you escorting me back to work?" Emma made a vague motion in the general direction of the Sheriff's office. "I've gone past curfew."

"You think I'll be your alibi?" Regina asked somewhat amused that Emma continued to push even though she had already gotten away with so much.

"Maybe," Emma tried to coerce. "If you hadn't stopped me then I would have made it back on time

"Well, if you hadn't lied to Robin then I would have never known that you went off to visit Zelena." Regina rejoined.

"To be fair," Emma pointed out, "I never lied to Robin. I ordered lunch for two and he made assumptions."

Before Regina could reply, Charming's voice broke into their banter. "Emma!" He called out. "You were supposed to be back at the station ten minutes ago."

Emma smiled at Regina knowing that unless Regina outright volunteered information to Charming that her field trip would be kept secret. "Regina kept me," she told her father.

Regina sighed and rolled her eyes, but kept silent.

"You should have let me know you were with her," Charming chastised.

"You're right. I'm sorry." Emma tried to act contrite which just caused Regina to roll her eyes again. "Next time, I'll let you know."

"Okay..." Charming nodded. He wanted to continue his lecture, but since Emma had already apologized he knew he couldn't push the issue. "Are you ready to go back?"

Emma looked to Regina. "I'll see you at home?"

"Tonight, I'm having dinner with Henry," Regina grinned. "So you get spend the time with your parents."

"When do I get to have dinner with Henry?" Emma asked, genuinely curious as to when they were going to give Henry the big reveal. She doubted that he continued to believe that Regina was still the Dark One. The boy was too smart for that.

"When I trust you to behave," Regina seriously replied.

"I can behave," Emma promised. "And I deserve to see my son."

"Don't push this," Regina warned. "You won't win."

And there was the punishment that Regina otherwise hadn't yet met out. Emma thought that her charm and coercion would make Regina sway away from the strict rules and regulations that Snow and Charming held to. She had, obviously, been wrong.

"If that's what you want," Emma capitulated. "Maybe next time then."

Regina felt Emma's discontent flair into her from the dagger, and she ignored it. "Don't get your hopes up yet," she cautioned before she raised her hands and used her magic to disappear.

"So," Charming awkwardly tried to start a conversation. "Did you and Regina have a good lunch?"

"Fantastic," Emma sarcastically replied before she started to walk back to the Sheriff's office.

Charming offered a self-satisfied grin. "I guess Regina isn't as wonderful as you thought?"

Emma felt her darkness flare up, except instead of being angry, It was proud. It prided on Regina's cunning and naturally subversive behavior. It had been bested this round by the only person it was okay being bested by. "She's a challenge," Emma admitted.

"That's a nice way of putting it." Charming decided not to push his point. "So I guess you're coming to dinner tonight," he changed the subject content with Emma's whereabouts having been fully explained.

"Looks like." Emma mindlessly followed her father as her thoughts strayed back to her Queen. She would go back to Zelena for answers, but she would never betray the Dark Queen. If Regina raised a strong enough protest to Emma visiting the mad sister, then she would stop the visits. She didn't want to cause Regina undue worry, nor did she want to suffer the future consequences.

"Emma," Charming cut into Emma's thoughts, "have you been listening to me at all?"

"Can't say that I have been," Emma easily admitted without remorse.

Charming shook his head, more worried about Emma's connection to Regina than he had been before. It was not a normal thing, nor was it particularly okay. Each woman had been different since Emma had taken on the Dark One. He couldn't explain the way they hovered around each other or the way in which their words seems to bar everyone else from interfering. He couldn't explain it. And, he knew that no matter what he or Snow did, that they couldn't contain it either.

Emma's darkness had been let out, and Regina had been there to meet it. Charming hadn't decided if that was a good thing or not. He didn't know whether to be thankful or afraid. But then again, he supposed, it didn't really matter. He was powerless either way.

 **A/N: Thank you for reading and for all the followers, favorites, and comments. All very much appreciated.**


	6. Chapter 6

They sat across from each other in awkward silence. Neither of them were quite sure how to bridge the divide that had formed between them within the last couple of weeks. It was cliché to say that a lot could change in a short period of time, but she almost felt like making the comment anyway. It's not that she felt a dire need to explain herself or their situation, but she did feel sympathy for the man she knew that she still loved and whom still was in love with her.

He was patient and kind and hadn't tried to push or pull her too hard in one direction or another, and she did love him for that. She loved him for his willingness to step aside and not demand of her answers that she didn't know how to give. She loved him for trying to understand though she could easily tell he had no real grasp of the situation at hand. She loved him for caring for her outside of her ability to control and contain the latest threat.

Her love for him was easy and comfortable. It gave her the experiences of romance and intimate companionship that had been denied to her even in her youth. It gave her a person that would always love her more than she would ever love him, and in that she found the comfort of not having to risk her heart completely.

Because if he ever had left or if he had ceased living, she would go on. She would still be happy and she would not be broken. She could let him go, and had already done it once before. What had followed their separation didn't involve a montage of her inevitable self-destruction. What had followed, was her doing and being the exact same person that she had been before.

The time previously spent with him had been refocused towards her son and Emma Swan. She had even had occasion to reunite with a few friends from a life past but not forgotten. She had explored her world and those who were left in it. The only reason she had reached out to the man who had left her, was because he was in danger and she loved him; she wanted him to be safe.

And, as Regina looked upon Robin, she would never deny that her feelings for the man still existed. They were as pure and honest as they ever had been. They rested comfortably and easily against her chest like a favored blanket offering her its warmth.

Yet, no matter how much Regina loved Robin she knew that her choices were not meaningless idols to be ignored. It was not Robin's dagger embedded in her arm. It was not Robin's body that shared her home and her bed. It was not Robin's flashes of emotion that were tethered to hers.

It was not Robin, and it never would be.

Fate might have tried to choose Robin for her, but even it could not dictate over the consequences of free will and the compounded and convoluted emotions that she felt towards Emma Swan-a woman who had saved her and a woman that she had saved time and time again because they just didn't know how not to risk their lives for one another.

"So," Robin was the first to speak. "How are you doing, Regina?"

The question sounded more like a rote response to spur their conversation into something other than silence rather than a genuine interest in her well-being. Regina didn't doubt that Robin cared, but she knew that the question asked wasn't the one he wanted to ask. He was being polite and still not pushing her for answers.

Regina leaned back in her chair, suddenly becoming aware that Robin was filled with trepidation. She could see his anxiety pouring out of him in the way that his right knee bobbed up and down, and in the way that his hands curled tightly around each other. He was a man at odds with his own body not knowing whether he should prepare to defend himself from heartbreak or rejoice in the presence of his love.

"It's been difficult," Regina's words were stilted. She was both afraid of confessing too much and too little. She didn't want to lose Robin, but she didn't want him hanging on either. She wanted to do right by him even if she had no idea what the right thing looked like.

"I imagine that it has been," Robin tried to offer his empathy though he had no way of truly connecting to Regina's words. She had not spoken to him about all that had transpired since Emma's transformation, and even before their current predicament, they had experienced a very short reunion before Rumple's plan to make heroes of the villains came to fruition.

They had been separated for far longer than the weeks since they returned to Storybrooke, and the effects of the separation were felt keenly by them both. "Have you settled back in?" Regina randomly wondered somewhat ashamed that she hadn't thought to consider it before.

"As much as anyone can here," Robin tried to smile but his mouth couldn't form the necessary shape to add the additional layer of deceit to their overly polite interaction.

"I'm glad to hear that." Perhaps, Regina admitted to herself, she shouldn't have had Robin meet her at her office. She should have offered a more intimate setting that at least let Robin know she still cared for him.

Suddenly, as if forcing himself out of his own torture wheel, Robin stopped bouncing his knee, unclasped his hands, and then took a deep breath. As he released it, he leaned forward and met Regina's eyes. "What's going on here, Regina?" He asked after having found his bravery, and also perhaps a bit of his pride.

Regina was caught between wanting to react as the Queen who answered to no one or as the woman who could not understand how it was she had come to this moment. In the end, she could choose neither Queen nor woman.

The Dark One's dagger- _Emma's_ dagger flared against her skin, and it reminded her that she was no longer Queen and woman. She had elevated past those titles as Emma had elevated beyond being their Savior.

Someone else was beginning to emerge-a person born both from the Queen, the woman, and the Dark One's Chosen. It was slowly slithering into existence and merging itself around all things she had once known about herself. It tugged and pulled at her psyche and forced its will upon her.

She stood up and removed the blazer that had been covering her arms. She laid it gently against the chair she sat in, and then crossed the great divide that kept her from the man whom she had loved. She bent down in front of him and placed her left forearm directly under his view.

"You told Snow White and Charming that you feared that the darkness was rising inside of me," she said as her eyes slowly crept up from her arm to her lover's eyes.

Robin's gaze shifted down to Regina's arm, then to her lips, and then finally to her eyes. "That's not a tattoo, is it?"

Regina chuckled at the irony of what her newly minted mark meant when weighed against the lion's tattoo that Robin bore. His mark was meant to be hers. It was meant to label him as her love and as her destiny. Yet, she had not been marked for him. She was not his.

"It's not a tattoo," Regina shook her head. "It's Emma's totem and it binds her to me."

"And what does it do to you?" Robin asked already fearing the answer.

"It's facilitated a rather unexpected," Regina helplessly searched for the right words, "connection between us."

"Connection?" Robin's voice was flat. He was not a stupid man. "So I'm not just seeing things, then?"

She would not ask what things it was that he saw. There was no reason to torment either one of them with the truth. Her eyes dropped to her forearm. "No, I suppose you aren't."

Robin leaned away from Regina and took in a short gasp of air. His breathing came more heavily as he begun pushing down his anger and pain. "Has it always been her, then?" The words were forced from him by his sudden desire to understand if what he thought was his ever really was.

Regina reached inside of herself and pulled at the phantom string that she knew connected her to Emma Swan. She tugged at its beginnings and endings trying to decipher when exactly it had formed. Was it before she had taken on the dagger? Was it when Emma had anchored the Darkness? Was it in the Enchanted Forest or was it in Neverland?

She could not grasp onto its beginnings as it seemed infinite and random. It was not fate nor was it destiny. It just...was-unexpectedly and unconventionally was. "I love you, Robin," Regina did not raise her eyes to meet Robin's. "There was never any deceit in that."

"You should have known," Robin accused her, for once letting his anger take rein instead of his patience and instead of his love for the woman whom he loved above all others.

"How?" Regina rose and met Robin's anger. "How could I have ever guessed that any of this would happen?"

"How couldn't you have?" Robin stood up and pushed past Regina. He delved into his memories of Emma and Regina that he had tried to destroy so that he could forget. "From the very moment I first met you," his voice lowered as his anger quickly began to recede in waves of his hopelessness, "it has been Emma and it has been Henry. The room you make in your heart for everyone else is but a fraction of the size that you reserve for them. "

"When we first met I had decided to kill myself," Regina was unsure if her statement was evidence against or in favor of Robin's accusation. "My whole world was gone, and I never thought I could survive it. You helped me then. _You_ saved me."

"It wasn't me that pulled you back," Robin suddenly realized. "Not really. You stayed alive to protect Henry and Emma from Zelena, and when we returned to Storybrooke it wasn't my presence that made you want to be the hero."

No, Regina silently agreed, it hadn't been Robin. "I've known that Emma was a..." again she searched for the right words that would convey all that had been happening and all that she understood. "Significant part of my life. It is only now that she has also become a significant part of me."

Regina's words blasted a hole into Robin's heart. He had been trying to prep for it since so much of his world had changed and stuttered about without direction that he was unsure he could face one more fork in the road without trying to meet it head on. He was a man who had already lost his wife not once, but twice-once from death and once from heartless trickery. He was supposed to already know how it felt to be left behind.

"If that's the way it's to be," Robin's words trailed off. He wasn't quite sure what it was he was trying to say. His chest hurt and his breathing came in irregular breaths that he didn't know how to control.

"We still need you, Robin," Regina assured hoping to offer him some purpose. " _I_ still need you."

"You have never needed me," Robin's statement landed between them like a line drawn in the sand that separated fact from fiction. "But the Darkness is still a threat," he conceded. "And I have a son and an unborn child to protect."

Oddly, Robin's words were not reassuring. He seemed to have made a decision that Regina was unsure she could support. "Your aid is appreciated," she said knowing that they were beginning to speak in riddles.

"I'll do whatever's necessary to protect my family," Robin promised.

"Let's remember," Regina warned, "that Emma isn't a threat."

Robin's eyes swept over Regina's arm. "I believe we might see things a bit differently."

"We are all meeting again to discuss the situation," Regina decided to offer. "You should come."

A sardonic laugh escaped from the pits of Robin's pain. "What's the point in that anymore?" He asked. "You're all willing to see this town crumble before you'll do anything to stop Emma."

"No," Regina immediately corrected. "We just want to give her a chance, instead of leaving her to be hanged."

Robin bowed his head and did his very best to rein in whatever resentment that was building inside of him. "I'll consider it," he amended.

Regina moved back to her desk as she sensed the end of their conversation. She considered giving Robin further validation as to his worth and importance to their small team of heroes, but decided against telling another lie. His participation favored him more than it did anyone else. He, not unlike Hook, had only been made a part of their group, not because of who he was but, because he rode on the coattails of an existing member.

"I don't want to lose you, Robin," Regina said instead of any other meaningless platitudes that she could offer.

"Nor I you," Robin whispered, "but it seems to have happened anyway."

"I'm right here," Regina told him. "And I do still intend on helping you handle Zelena." She would leave it unsaid that she had been given further motivation to keep Zelena well controlled since the Dark One had marked her sister as a pawn.

"Right, right," Robin nodded. "Then I suspect you endeavor for us to remain friends?" He asked, not entirely without sarcasm.

"I intend to try," Regina promised.

"And what say does Emma have?" Robin wondered. "She's grown more possessive as the Dark One."

"She has none," Regina was quick to answer. "She is not my master."

"But she is a murderer," Robin gave his dark jealousy a moment to flourish. "And I'm no longer convinced that you can stop her."

"No killing," Regina met Robin's gaze. "That is the only command I have given her."

"You ordered the Dark One," Robin stepped towards Regina. "Can you order Emma Swan?"

Regina knew that Robin's words were a challenge. Her emotions flared, eager to defend Emma and her decisions. "I don't have to."

Robin raised an accusing hand towards Regina's arm. "You're the one that said that the Darkness hasn't taken Emma. You've kept it from doing so. That must mean that Emma is split and that there is a part of her that you can't control."

Lie, Regina immediately thought. She needed to lie, because Snow and Charming hadn't yet worked out that small disclaimer for themselves, and she didn't need Robin going to alert them about anything else. "I assure you," she did not blink and she didn't turn away, "I can control her."

"Forgive me if this sounds unkind," Robin scoffed, "but it was Emma that killed Cruella. The Dark One had nothing to do with that."

Regina leaned back onto the edge of her desk as a slow defensive anger started to build inside of her. She recognized the underlying hostility that lingered between Robin's words. If he were to be a hero, then that meant not overlooking Emma's transgressions as easily as everyone else had. His vested interests were no longer wrapped up in Regina's.

"Show to me one hero that has kept their blood innocence," Regina coldly replied, "and I will show you a liar."

Robin's own hands were not free from having taken a life. Taking life, like risking his own, was a known consequence he had accepted when he had picked up a weapon. "Fair enough," he backed away from Regina's obvious ire. "But it still might be something we need to keep in mind."

"Consider it noted," Regina said and then turned away, no longer willing to continue their conversation since it had turned so quickly into something she could no longer control. Robin was understandably upset, and there was little she could do in that moment to console him.

Registering his dismissal, Robin nodded his head and then turned towards Regina's office door. He had not wanted to go on the offensive-had even promised himself that he wouldn't-but he could not control his sudden emotion. Regina had been ripped from him and he had done nothing to stop it. He had not saved Regina from darkness.

As his hand reached the door handle, he opened his mouth to say his goodbyes, but he didn't know what to say. He was unsure of what words would satisfy the abrupt dissolution of their relationship. So instead, he said nothing. He opened the door and then walked through it without looking back.

Regina could see Robin's reflection in the window she looked out of as he left her. She was unsure what exactly it was she was supposed to be feeling. She had loved that man-still loved him. She had thought that she would build a life with him. She had thought it had all been figured out.

"You kicked the puppy," Emma's voice broke into Regina's reverie.

Regina turned, noticing that Emma had not used the door, but instead had opted to use magic. "Why are you here?" She asked.

Emma shrugged obviously as confused by the sudden visit as Regina was. "I don't know. I think you called me."

"I did no such thing," Regina brushed off her clothes as if it could help brush away her thoughts of Robin.

"Not with a phone called," Emma clarified as she put her hand over her chest. "It was more of a...summoning, I guess?" She sounded unsure, but she had no other way to describe it. "I could feel anger and pain, and that you needed me here."

"Needed you?" Regina's voiced hiked with incredulity. "For what? To blast away all the sanity that I have left?"

"Hey," Emma's voice dropped. "I know that you love him," she admitted.

Regina quickly wiped away a tear that had freed itself from her emotional containment. "What do you know of love, Old Friend?" She harshly accused.

Emma raised her hands in surrender. "It's just me, Regina. Your friend, more than anything else, I guess."

"My friend more than..." Regina began to mock but quickly cut herself off. "Go home, Emma," she said instead.

"I can't," Emma motioned towards Regina's uncovered forearm.

Regina looked down at her arm and saw that the dagger was glowing. It pulsed inside of her, obviously responding to whatever internal turmoil she was experiencing that she would not put voice to.

"I think my only options right now are to be here with you or to torture Robin to near death," Emma unhelpfully supplied. "I choose you."

Regina ran her hand over the dagger resting beneath her skin. Its edges no longer hurt. "Robin thinks that I have always reserved my heart for you," she mindlessly commented as her magic pulsed against the dagger. "He was wrong, because I only gave what was required of me."

She considered ripping the dagger from her arm, but she knew that the act would not accomplish anything. Besides, she was unsure how she would feel without its reassuring presence. "You have always required all of it and all of me." Her eyes finally raised to meet Emma's. "Both of you have."

Emma crossed the distance between them, and without hesitancy, she reached out and grabbed onto Regina's waist. Her touches had been becoming bolder and surer. They had not yet established the full level of their intimacy, but new borders were drawn every day. Each moment grew upon the one before it, and were beginning to reveal the possibilities of their newly realized connection.

"And so have you," Emma rejoined. "Let's not forget that you dropped me off a damn bridge when I gave you less than you demanded."

Regina leaned into Emma's hold as she shook her head knowing that Emma's point had been well and truly made. "It was for the greater good," she lightly defended herself as she felt her anger and pain begin to diffuse as if being washed away into the dark matter that pulled she and Emma together.

"It was terrifying," Emma chuckled in remembrance, but she quickly turned somber. "It's terrifying now," she confessed. "Except this time I've pulled you out onto the bridge with me."

Regina inhaled a deep breath. "Perhaps," she said through her exhale. "Or perhaps not." She pulled slightly away from Emma so that she could meet her savior's eyes. "Maybe I saw you falling and couldn't watch you fall alone."

Emma nodded, but remained silent. Her right hand drifted from Regina's waist up to the dagger where her fingers traced its edges. Once satisfied with its and its hostess's safety, her hand continued to drift up to Regina's neck where she brushed back dark hair so that her lips could leave their mark against her Queen's skin. She had a sudden compulsion to wash away with her touch all the places in which Robin Hood had marred Regina's skin with his unworthy stench.

 _He_ had not been worthy. _He_ was weak. _He_ was nothing.

Regina closed her eyes against the barrage of magic that Emma pushed into her both from her touch and from her lips. It caused her own magic to spark and burn around them, hot and barely contained. "Emma," she moaned, trying to caution Emma to the danger, but Emma didn't stop. She pushed harder disregarding what barriers of safety they might have need to establish.

The magic burned from red to purple then black to blue. It grew hotter with each iteration and looped and curved running between and within them both. It pushed and pulled without rules. "Emma," Regina tried again unsure if she had the strength or the desire to pull back.

She forced her eyes open and twisted so that she was facing Emma instead of facing away. Emma's eyes fluttered open, recolored to the electric blue of the fire that burned between them. "Are you ready?" Emma whispered.

"For what?" Regina asked confused as to what was happening and what else could happen.

"I don't know," Emma whispered and then pushed against Regina driving their lips together.

Their magic flared again, bursting outward to the room around it and beyond. They were consumed by it, and drowning in its power and depth. Too late to stop it or to take control, Regina fell further in.

Suddenly, she felt as if she were floating and no longer anchored to earth and mortar. Again, Regina pulled away from Emma. When she opened her eyes all she saw was blurred images of their world and Emma and the purple and blue swirls of magic that consumed them.

She felt like a god standing upon Mount Olympus, looking down at her kingdom.

"It feels like ours," Emma whispered in wonder, having no better understanding of what had happened to them than Regina had. She just knew that the magic that coated the town felt like hers and Regina's. It knew them as intimately as they knew themselves.

"It does," Regina solemnly agreed. "But we can't take it. You know that."

"Look," Emma raised her hand and pointed to the edges of Storybrooke. Beyond the border, there was nothing but darkness. "That's where the magic stops."

Without thought, Emma gathered the magic swirling around them and then threw it beyond the town line. Regina reached out to stop her, but was too late. The magic had been released and drifted beyond the barrier. It spread and flowed trickling into the very seams of the earth.

"Emma," Regina chastised, "this isn't a game."

Emma shrugged only partially contrite. "Wouldn't know what happened until we tried." She pointed back to the border. "Looks like I just expanded the town."

Regina turned and looked at the steady stream of magic that now flowed into the previously dark corners. "Don't do it again," she warned.

Emma smirked and reached out to gather more of their magic. "You don't think it's getting a little crowded around here?" she joked. "We can build an island for Robin and his Merry Men."

Regina grabbed onto Emma's arm. "No jokes," she seriously replied. "There is always a price."

Emma met Regina's eyes for a moment longer before she let the magic gathered in her hand fall back between them. "Do you have any idea how we stop this?"

"This," Regina's gaze swept around them, "is a first."

"How do we power down?" Emma asked. "Burn the magic so we aren't so hyped up."

Regina looked to the magic that kept them outside of the time and space of Storybrooke. She flicked her hand and brought some of it to her. She curled her fingers around it and then threw it at Emma.

Unprepared for the sudden onslaught, Emma didn't defend herself and the ball of magic hit her in the chest and then flung her back to the very edges of the town. As soon as Emma landed, their spell broke and Regina was back to standing inside of her office.

"Damn," she whispered as she saw the aftereffects of their sudden union. Everything inside of the office had been incinerated and only ashes remained.

"What'd you that for?" Emma asked as she barged into the office. Her shirt was singed, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.

Before Regina could reply, Emma realized the new state of the Mayor's office. "Whoa. We did this?"

"Apparently," Regina sighed.

"I'm impressed," Emma confessed and then after a moment added, "and terrified."

"We can't do it again," Regina decided. "Not until we understand what the hell is going on between us."

Emma shrugged. "Whatever makes you happy," she conceded.

Regina looked around at her office again. The only evidence of what had happened was the scorch marks on the floor. They could have set the entire town of fire and incinerated everyone in it. They could have destroyed everything and everyone that they cared about.

"Don't waste energy on looking back," Emma advised. "We know now for next time."

"It's not that easy," Regina didn't want Emma's words of comfort. She should have known better and she should have pulled away.

"Do you think…?" Emma began to ask but then stopped herself.

Regina didn't push Emma to finish. She was sure that the question Emma was about to ask wasn't one she was ready to consider. She would not complete the ritual for the binding. She would put neither of them in that position especially since they were sharing and taking things from each other that neither of them were built for…that neither of them were ready for.

She could not call it love. She could not weigh it like she had weighed her feelings for Robin. It was a separate thing, outside of life and time and space. It burned and it soothed and it gave and it took without asking. It was consuming. It…was everything.

 **A/N: Again, thank you so much for reading and for the comments. They are truly appreciated.**


	7. Chapter 7

A feeling was starting to pass over her. It grew each day and made her want to punch holes in the walls. There were memories spreading through her mind that wouldn't let her escape. It was like she was walking on broken legs that would never get a chance to heal because there was no resting...no chance of respite. She was struggling and through it all she had to figure out who she was, while pretending like she already knew. It was an insidious act that forced her to battle with a fiend that hated being fettered and caged away.

At first, it hadn't been that bad...the pretending. Enough of her had been left that she could still pull out the desire she had had to satisfy her parents, her lover and her son. Living up to their expectations had motivated her for so long that the remnants of the desire had been enough. But each day she pulled further away from who she had been. She morphed and changed and experienced the world through different eyes and with a different soul.

Her love no longer motivated her. It existed, not quite dormant, but rather covered up in jaded lines that painted the world in sharp edges. The pieces of her life and her past that she had left unexamined were now sketched out in her dreams disallowing her to escape the pain and bitterness of years of loneliness and mistreatment.

Yet, she pretended that she wasn't carrying around a ghost that dressed in her clothes and that wore her soul. She pretended that it wasn't whispering into her ear reminding her that she had been asked time and time again to be anyone but herself. She had always been told to hide away her anger and lock away her pain because good girls didn't cry and good girls didn't fight and good girls always did what's right.

It was Emma Swan's duty to protect the town and its people, even if that meant protecting them from herself. She was supposed to be relentless in her tasks even if she was broken. She was supposed to never give up, even if she had a demon inside of her offering her the only apologies that she would get for having to be the good girl, the tough girl, the moral girl.

"You look entirely too focused on the book in front of you to actually be reading it," Regina's voice cut into Emma's melancholic daze. Emma turned her blank stare away from the book that she was supposed to be reading and looked over at the woman sitting next to her. Their legs were touching, but otherwise they were a respectable distance apart. After their short walk into another plain of existence, they had left their contact to a minimum. There was too much risk in harnessing magic that they didn't know how to control, especially since the magic was powerful enough to at the very least destroy the town...or create a new one. It gave them the power of raw creation and absolute destruction, which was an interesting reality neither had delved too deeply into.

"I'm not reading it," Emma closed the book and then let it drop from her grasp onto the table in front of her.

Regina raised her brow and leaned back so that she was in a position to properly evaluate Emma. "You're brooding."

Emma sighed. "I'm brooding," she admitted, "but I can't help it."

"Okay," Regina adjusted herself so that she was fully facing the woman she was sharing her evening with. She closed her own book and placed it next to the one Emma had been blankly staring at. "What is it?"

There was no forgetting that Regina had only ever demanded of her one thing-no killing and no harming anyone. She had not expected Emma to take up the job of Sheriff nor had she forced Emma to interact with her parents or anyone else for that matter. She had not asked Emma to pretend.

"Come now, Old Friend," Regina said to fill in the too silent space that had formed while Emma collected her thoughts, "you've never been bashful."

The unlikely endearment forced the monster inside of Emma to bash at the cage doors-it liked sparring with its Dark Queen. It liked the challenge and it liked pushing Regina further towards the Darkness while it got pulled closer to the Light. "Your old friend is tucked away," Emma replied.

Regina reached out to cup Emma's chin in the palm of her left hand. "Don't lie," she challenged. "I feel you watching me."

Emma's eyes fluttered shut. "It always watches," she whispered. "And it pulls and tugs and claws."

"Ah," Regina's hand dropped. "Well, no one ever said that being the Dark One was easy."

"Yeah well," Emma snorted, "being Emma Swan wasn't such a walk in the park either."

"No," Regina agreed, "I suppose that it wasn't."

Emma looked away from Regina. Her eyes focused on her hands that were resting benignly on her thighs. She flexed her fingers already feeling the beginnings of the Dark One emerging from its confinement. "And yet, everyone knows who Emma Swan is but me."

Regina could feel the darkness rising. It sparked against her and within her. She could taste it on the tip of her tongue. _Containment_ she reminded herself. Her job was to contain it. "They know nothing," Regina declared. "They assume."

"They tell me what to do," Emma whispered, her eyes still focused on her hands. "Like they've known me my whole life."

"It makes them feel better." Regina hated that she was the one standing between Emma and complete chaos. She didn't think it was particularly fair that her love was part of sin for its darkness and part of glory for its selflessness. "It's hard to listen while standing on a pedestal."

Emma shook her head, "That's not what it is," she disagreed. "It's fear. They are so afraid of doing the wrong thing that they are blinded by their own goodness."

That was certainly not a lie, Regina reasoned. But that was the thing about the Dark One-it understood the creeping truth held within lies. "You can tell them about your struggles, Emma. That's the only way they'll ever get the chance to know you."

"Why should I be the one shoving it in their faces?" Emma asked as her heart started to feel the fire of her unfettered demon. "They should know to ask...you did."

"That may be true," Regina agreed, "but my expectations of you were exceedingly low, and I needed to know you in order to destroy you."

Emma couldn't help the grin that captured her melancholy and forced it away. She recalled all the moments between her and Regina that forced them into getting to know one another. They had screamed and yelled and demanded that assumptions not be made and that expectations not be set. "I studied you," she confessed, her eyes finally rising to meet Regina's. "From the very beginning, I made it a point to know you."

"Know your enemy," Regina broke the barrier between them and took a hold of Emma's right hand.

Emma's fingers entangled themselves with Regina's. "And know yourself, right?"

Regina leaned forward. "We're getting there."

Emma concentrated on her hand wrapped around Regina's. She called up that darkness that was becoming a deeper part of her and thought about its magic. It blended with hers and gave her knowledge of the art that she hadn't known before.

"What are you doing?' Regina didn't feel alarm as she felt Emma's magic rise up. She was getting used to the flares that came as Emma's emotions burned and soothed with each passing moment.

Emma's reply was to bring her blue fired magic to the tips of her fingers so that it engulfed their joined hands. Regina immediately felt her magic rise up and merge with Emma's. Purple fire met blue. The magic danced around their hands until it turned into a blood red flame.

"You've been practicing," Regina muttered.

"Zelena told me that the Old Magic doesn't come from the elements; it tears out from the fabric of life, flesh and bone and all the little pieces," Emma directly quoted.

Regina rolled her eyes but didn't break contact. "That sounds like something the witch would say."

"Is she wrong?"

Regina considered lying, but she knew that there was no point in it. "No, but that's why old magic is rarely used anymore. It has a habit of killing its host."

Emma's eyes flashed, a dark hue shadowed the depths of her gaze. "It hasn't killed me yet."

Regina raised a brow as she took in more of the magic, taking in more than she gave causing a disruption to the balance.

"Owe!" Emma sucked in a breath as she yanked her hand back.

"There's still time for that, Old Friend," Regina said with a smirk, glad that she hadn't fallen completely to the temptation that Emma offered.

Emma looked at her hand, now singed from the flames that had engulfed it, "You burnt me."

Regina's eyes roamed over Emma's hand and arm. "Well when you insist on playing with fire..."

Emma hadn't thought about the fire she had been harnessing. She didn't consider her new magic or its origins. She pulled at it because it was there and using it eased the pain she felt when she thought about who she had been and who she was supposed to be. The magic...it was constant and ready and there without asking of her anything but for her to use it no matter the chaos it might bring with it. It set her fears on fire and burned all of her weakness away.

A part of her knew that the magic that ran through her veins was tainted with the Darkness. It felt heavier than the magic she had been born with. It ran deeper inside of her and crept along her bones. It flowed through and around her, and it filled her.

"Maybe," Emma smirked, "I just want to play with you." She quickly reached out and grabbed onto the hand Regina had used to burn her. Without knowing her exact intent, she pulled Regina to her and tried calling forth Regina's magic instead of hers.

The dagger in Regina's arm flared, but she tamped down on the temptation to let her magic escape. "I'm not a fan of your new tricks," she whispered.

Old magic was not abstract. It was primal-physical and raw, and could not just be locked away until called upon by its wrangler. It was alive and as constant as a heartbeat that extended another moment of life throughout the body. Once brought in, it could only be banished by death. Yet, in all of its seriousness, its use made both Regina and Emma feel like they were gulping down mouthfuls of sustenance spilling from a Fountain of Youth.

"You're holding back," Emma accused as her attempt to pull at Regina's magic became increasingly fruitless. Her control over her counterpart had proven to have strict limitations. At first, Emma had believed it was because she didn't understand the magic that had opened up to her, but she was increasingly starting to believe that it had something more to with Regina holding her totem.

Regina slowly withdrew from Emma's hold. "It's intentional, I assure you." A shaky hand reached up and brushed her hair away from her face. She forced her breathing to calm, not quite sure when it had become out of control.

Knowing that whatever leeway Regina had given was over with, Emma moved away from the woman that fed her cravings. "Do you even know what this is?" She wondered. "Do you know what you've done to us?"

Regina's eyes narrowed, uninterested in being confronted for fending off yet another doomsday. In truth, she had no clue what she had done. She had acted because she did not know how to do otherwise. "I did what I had to."

"You've put me on a ledge, Regina," Emma moved further away. Her eyes were turning between shades as the magic in her settled and the Darkness went to rest. "I can't push forward and I can't pull back."

"The Darkness is supposed to consume you," Regina couldn't hold back the sliver of anger that revealed itself in her tone. "You're aren't supposed to be able to lament about how you're not a complete monster."

"I am a monster," Emma's words fired from her like a bullet from a gun. "Just caged and put away. I'm not the Hero, not anymore, and you know that. You see it, because if you didn't then you would let me see Henry."

Regina stood and then turned away from Emma. "I'm not going to discuss this with you, Old Friend."

"No," Emma shook her head, "it's just me now."

Regina's looked over her shoulder trying to assess how much of Emma was with her. "Then what is it you want?" She turned and placed her hands on her hips, readying for a fight she wasn't sure wouldn't become physical. Their magic had urged on the emotional fire between them, and it had not yet completely settled. They each were on edge, burning off a high by containing their desire rather than let it burn through them and between them.

Emma considered Regina's question, and quickly discovered that she couldn't answer it. She didn't know what it was that she wanted. She didn't know why she was suddenly acting out after having been relatively calm in their previously undisturbed companionship. She couldn't identify where her anger came from or why it was so intently aimed at Regina Mills. "I stopped the Darkness from consuming you and this town," she eventually said, her voice lost to her own inadequate understanding of herself. "I had a son, parents, and a man who loved me...but I gave it all up."

"You do still have those things, Swan," Regina interrupted. "No one has abandoned you."

"We both know that the chances of me getting rid of the Darkness is slim to none," Emma had accepted this inevitability the minute she woke up in Regina's arms after taking on the Dark One. She had told her parents to find a way to save her, but she had known that her only reprieve would come in death, and she got the distinct impression that Regina knew that as well. Otherwise, why would Regina bind her? Why go through all the trouble of constructing a humane cage if it wasn't supposed to be made a home?

"I'm the one that's abandoned them," she muttered. "I'll never be the person they thought they knew."

Regina didn't reply, she felt Emma on the edge of a breakthrough and didn't want to chance ruining it. Her hands fell from her hips and she slid out of Emma's direct line of vision; it was her retreat and the only evidence that, though she had pried herself away from Emma's coaxing, she had not resisted the Darkness.

Too lost in her own realization, Emma took no notice of her victory. Instead, she gave voice to the emotion that haunted so many of her dreams. "I hate myself for it," she whispered. "I hate that I can't be who they want me to be." Her eyes drifted until they landed on Regina's unaffected gaze. "And I hate them for making me feel this way."

Regina knew from experience, that Emma's hatred didn't stem from her Darkness but instead grew from her pain. Yet, she was helpless to ease its intensity. Her own journey towards recovery had taken her on a quest where she committed murder and destroyed anything or anyone that displeased her, and she had done it all without the Dark One feeding her hatred. "I can take some of it from you," it was the only thing she could offer. "The totem," she looked to her arm, "it can funnel it to me."

"More of it, you mean," Emma softly corrected. "I can already feel it bleeding into you."

Regina wouldn't deny it. There was no point in denying something that they both knew to be truth. Each day, Regina felt more and more of Emma—the highs, the lows, and all the little moments in-between. She blocked out what she could but she was more and more just relegating it to an autonomous pulse which was mostly ignored unless she thought about it; like a breath held in only because she didn't want to let it go.

"I can handle it," Regina promised. "I know how to."

"And how is that fair to you?" Emma questioned, immediately defensive of the woman she had learned not to hate. "How is that keeping your happiness?"

Regina couldn't hold back the flicker of disappointment she felt from hearing Emma's assumption. "You think I'm happy?"

"If you're not," Emma accused, "then it's only because you're not allowing yourself to be."

"All—Allow?" Regina stumbled over the word hoping that she had somehow misunderstood. "What is it I'm supposed to allow, Swan? Am I supposed to let you experiment with our magic until we blow up the whole damn town?"

Emma didn't flinch under the wave of Regina's incredulity. "Complete the binding," she challenged, "give me your totem."

"No," Regina immediately refused. "That isn't an option."

Emma shrugged having already known that Regina would not budge on her refusal to finish the binding ritual that had tethered Emma's magic to Regina's. "Then I guess that means both of us will be miserable."

"Is it my dear sister that has you convinced binding me to you is some miraculous fix?" Regina stepped closer to Emma. "Because her version of binding the Dark One was much more like becoming the master and creating a slave."

"No," Emma truthfully denied, "Zelena has nothing to do with it."

"Then why bring it up?" Regina knew that she was overreacting, but she also knew that Emma was most probably right. It was possible that the only way to ease the burden of their tumultuous magic and emotion was to complete the ancient ritual that Regina had enacted without knowing what it was she was really doing. All she had known was that it was a way to stop the Dark One from completely taking over Emma; so she had acted.

"Maybe if I ask enough times you'll eventually say yes," Emma confessed her unoriginal strategy. "Until then," her eyes fluttered shut as she concentrated on pulling back the flow of her emotion that spilled into Regina, "I'm not letting you take on anymore than you already have."

Regina felt Emma's raw anger pull out of her, leaving her breathless. Unbidden, her hand reached up and covered her chest. "Don't be stupid, Emma."

"I might not be _their_ savior anymore, Regina," Emma acknowledged, "but I am still yours."

The dagger in Regina's arm flared and the breath that had been taken from her returned. Her connection to Emma manifested and was somehow lighter than it had been before. "How did you do that?" She wondered.

"You're my Chosen," Emma answered, not really understanding what that meant. It was a term she had been using because the Dark One had used it.

To Regina, it was just another reason to not complete the binding. She had researched, but she couldn't find a single reference to what being a 'Chosen' meant. There was no way for her to know if the meaning was unique to the Dark One or buried in the tradition of old magic. Either way, it had the potential to feed the chaotic fire that threatened to consume both her and Emma.

"I'll find a way to keep pretending," Emma promised. "I'll keep going."

A flicker of hatred brushed against Regina's heart—its origin didn't come from Emma. It was Regina's alone. "They are hurting you," she realized as her heart continued to clear from Emma's anger to reveal her own, "and they don't see it."

Emma closed the distance between them and reached out to pull Regina to her. She felt Regina's anger as Regina had felt hers, and instead of letting it flare she wanted to calm it. "We don't owe them anything. We can walk away and leave them to bleed."

The offer was tempting but ultimately unrealistic. Regina never ran away, not even for Emma Swan. "We'll find another way," she offered instead.

"Okay," Emma sighed. "Okay." Again, she buried her doubts and fears and concentrated on the constant flow of peace that came from her connection to her Chosen. It was the only thing that kept the monster at bay and the only thing that let her continue to pretend to be the hero that had never actually existed. As long as she could be Emma with Regina and be Regina's hero, then she'd find a way to continue to be a lie to everyone else.

 **A/N: Thank you for reading and sorry for the delay, it's been a busy month. I'm hoping for my first day off from work tomorrow since the last time I updated. We can see how that goes. But, truly, thank you for your comments and feedback. It is much appreciated.**


	8. Chapter 8

**I'm so sorry for the delay on this. No excuses. So thank you for your patience.**

She had masterfully avoided making decisions. Everything thus far had been a choice made in the spur of the moment when limited options presented themselves and consequences were weighed on a sliding scale. She had been in a constant state of reacting and had been given the leeway to do so. Everyone had been caught up in the latest circumstances and there had been no push to stop and measure all the things that could be, that might be, or that should be.

Things happened and choices had been made—one after the other bleeding one moment into the next. She hadn't wanted to take a step back to look at all the pieces around her so that she could start operating on a level above the need for immediate resolution. She hadn't wanted to talk to Emma about why it was they suddenly shared not only a house, and a room, but also a bed. She hadn't wanted to mention that Emma's dagger was melded so tightly into her that removing it might be like removing bone from flesh.

Regina hadn't wanted to turn the page on the prologue she and Emma had begun writing the moment they had liberated themselves from the Happy Endings that fate had handed them. She wanted to push away the main story just a moment longer so that all the mistakes, the missteps, and missed opportunities were brushed aside, because while she hated living in limbo she hated what might come next more.

Regina loathed uncertainty and she would have continued to push it all away, but Emma—her beautifully misguided and misinformed Emma—wanted to barrel on ahead like there were no risks and that nothing was capable of tearing them down. Emma pushed and pushed and Regina was more than capable of fending her off, but only when it came to the things that hardly mattered in the long run, because Emma didn't latch onto things that only mattered in the interim. So, when Emma had sat down next to her and, with the genuine interest of a mother intent on being better, asked, "When will you let me see Henry?" there was no derailing the conversation. There was no easy way to hide away from it.

Not when there had been no hint of the Dark One inside of Emma when she asked about their son. Not when there wasn't a trap being set so that Emma could barter and trade time with Henry like he was a commodity brokered on an open market between two superpowers. Not when time for the prologue had clearly run out and it was time to start their main story where Henry couldn't be safely sequestered within the invisible ink of an ominous future.

"It's been over a month, Regina," Emma argued. "I promise not to let the Darkness hurt him. I won't curse my son."

Despite the thousands of reasons not to, Regina believed Emma. She could feel Emma's conviction streaming into her from the tether that bound them. But still...they were speaking about Henry. They were talking about their idealistic son whose heroes had never failed him. He believed in the impossible because he had had it handed to him time and time again without full purview of all the pain and suffering that went along with it.

But promises and the best of intentions weren't roadmaps into the future. Emma wouldn't want to, and she would fight it as much as possible, but Regina held no doubt that, inevitably, Emma would fail Henry. She would break his heart, and then she would have to deal with his immature cruelty. She would have to learn how hard it was to earn forgiveness from a child who saw little gray weaved into the fabric of valor.

"It's not a matter of if the Darkness hurts him," Regina idly commented. "It's more a matter of when. It took over a decade for him to feel the true consequences of who I am. You won't be any different. You'll not want to, but you will disappoint him. You'll fall short of his expectations and one day, you will irreversibly destroy the pedestal he holds you on."

Regina's words were cruel, and they were meant to be. When speaking about Henry she was intent on not letting her emotions for Emma get in the way. She would neither do Henry nor Emma that disservice.

"You need to make peace with it," Regina continued before Emma could deny any of what Regina had claimed. "Once you have, then we can discuss Henry."

Emma shifted in her seat. She curled her right hand into a fist and then just as quickly unfurled it. "Me asking you for this is a courtesy, Regina. There's nothing holding me back from seeing him."

Regina was careful to hold her place. She didn't want to shift around and give Emma the impression that she was backing away from her conviction. In their word games of cat and mouse, Regina had learned to step carefully else she'd fall into an argument she couldn't get away from. "You're right, there isn't. But we both know that you've left the decision to me because I'm the best one to make it." They both believed that in matters involving Henry that decisions weren't meant to be left to an adolescent boy or a recently cursed woman. They both valued their son too much to abandon him to misguided whims.

Emma jumped up and then began pacing the small space between them. "He's already sought me out," her words sounded as if they had been forced out of her by an invisible rope lassoed around her throat forcing a confession spurred on by the objective truth Regina offered. "My father brought him to the station because _he_ thinks I'm ready."

Regina's eyes widened briefly before they narrowed as her anger washed through her. She had explicitly and in no uncertain terms let Emma's parents know that they could not approve Emma's visitation with Henry. They were poor judges of character—always had been and always would be. They were especially biased when it came to their daughter, whom they still could only see as the Savior.

"And if you had spent any length of time with him," Regina leaned slightly forward as she spoke, "then you wouldn't be asking my permission now." She couldn't be entirely certain, but the piece of Emma that was now tied to her offered no wave of deception. She understood that Emma's words had been a confession not a challenge, no matter how Emma tried to mask it.

There were bits of Emma that hated that Regina knew her so well. It made her feel as if she was no longer free since there was always someone who could hold her hostage to her own ideals. "I did meet with him," she defiantly declared. "I didn't run out the back door just because you didn't give me permission to see him first."

Regina crossed her legs and then leaned back until she was comfortably resting against the solid back of the sofa she sat on. "Of course you met with him—turning him away would have hurt his feelings."

Emma suddenly stopped moving. Guilt-ridden eyes met Regina's. "I stayed for maybe thirty seconds before I did walk out," she softly confessed. "I couldn't even look him in the eyes. I…" she stumbled over her words, "I hurt him." And in that moment, the reasons behind Emma opening up the discussion were revealed.

She wanted Regina to know that their time was running out. She wanted her to know that she wasn't ready to face Henry since her belief in herself was standing on a crumbling foundation of her identity. She no longer could leave her son untainted. She was not his savior, and she needed help in letting Henry understand that.

Regina carefully watched Emma's ire collapse down into the insecure woman who still held to the belief that she was an amateur at being a mother. Regina reached out her hand and waited for Emma to take it. She allowed her anger at the Charmings to recede and be replaced with the compassion she let herself feel for very few people. "Come here," she ordered as Emma stared too long at the invitation that was being offered to her. "I'm not going to burn you alive."

A smirk escaped across Emma's lips. "You've burnt me before."

"And it was well deserved." Regina's smirk matched Emma's. "But I can assure you that's not my intent now."

"So says the Evil Queen," Emma joked as she clasped onto Regina's hand and let the former queen pull her down next to her.

Without wanting to think about her motives, Regina broke her rule about physical distance and laid their joined hands onto her thigh. She took in a short breath, and then embraced the madness that would take them past their prologue.

"We should start with supervised visits," she kept her tone even, though she felt her chest tighten with the risks of promising Emma anything outside of their current daily routine. "We both know it'll be impossible to continue to keep Henry from you. I hate to say it, but just because he's older now than he was when you first arrived, that doesn't mean he's matured."

Emma couldn't help the snort that escaped her at the indirect slight Regina had handed out, perhaps without even meaning it. "Are you saying that I'm not a maturing influence?"

Emma's question derailed Regina's quickly manifesting plan for their future. She evaluated her words and rolled over her intent. "Subconscious revelation," she jokingly admitted. "I assure you."

"I'm sure," Emma sarcastically agreed.

Unexpectedly, Regina tightened her grip on Emma's hand. The smirk fell from her lips and she dipped her head to stare at their entangled fingers. She was quickly lost in her memories of her and Emma's first meeting to the latest memory of Emma aimlessly roaming about the room until she had the courage to bring up Henry, and to all the moments in between them. This, she realized—this thing where they sat together and made decisions about their lives, about their son, about the town, and everything else—this was their future. Even if Emma hadn't taken on the Dark One, it would still have been their future whether they wanted it or not.

They had not exchanged their Happy Endings to choose their own adventures. They had not waged their happiness for a turn at misery. And though they had sacrificed, and though they had flailed around trying to find the next steps in seeking out a future, they had not redefined their destinies. They had not reshaped themselves… They were as they had always been destined to be—they were martyrs and victims…the hero and the villain pushing at the edges of their world to drive it forward.

Destiny had not let them escape. It shined upon them as it laughed at their naïveté.

"Hey," Emma pulled at Regina's attention, afraid of losing Regina to whatever deep thoughts that her Queen was conjuring up that might make it impossible for them to move forward on making any decision about Henry. "I know it's messed up that Henry has to be around me like...well like I am now. But me running away from my son isn't the answer."

"No," Regina breathlessly whispered, her eyes not leaving their joined hands, "it's not that."

"Then what is it?" Emma's growing concern bled into her voice. She could see Regina retreating and she knew it was best to worry, because when Regina retreated then things always quickly went awry between them. Oftentimes, Regina running away meant Emma would have to jump into action to ensure her Queen didn't self-destruct.

Regina couldn't help but to do the thing that she always did when faced with something that suddenly became too much for her to handle—she deferred her pain and transformed it into anger. She released Emma's hand and then stood up, putting distance between her and Emma and their oddly predestined future. "On second thought, I don't think Henry is ready for this. We need to give it more time."

Emma followed Regina, knowing the risks in letting Regina escape. "I know he isn't ready, but isn't that what we're talking about here? How to get him ready for whatever me being...well me, will do?"

Regina shook her head and stepped further away, but she kept silent. She could not explain to Emma all the things that had suddenly assaulted her awareness. She could not adequately describe the feelings rushing through her as her brain played through the next fifty years of their lives-side-by-side, saving the town or destroying it, chasing each other down into different worlds, changing lives and forming the world like it was clay running across their fingers.

Because they had that power, and they had already been taking advantage of it. They had dictated their will upon not just Storybrooke, but upon worlds. They had changed magic and reset time and curses just so that their outcomes were the desired ones. Anything that hadn't fit was destroyed or reshaped until it accepted their ideals and their goals as truth, because they sat at the head of the oligarchy as the Queen and the Knight. They left little room for anyone else.

Again, as Regina stepped away Emma closed the distance. "Are we still freaking out about Henry?" she dumbly asked. "Because I'm getting the feeling that we aren't."

Before, Emma's turn of phrase about 'feeling' out the room would have been hyperbole, but she wasn't declaring her emotion as an exaggeration for effect. She had quite literally felt the change in Regina as it was happening. Emma had felt Regina's initial panic and then the quick calm that had come after. It, in turn, had calmed her and she was able to settle and speak to Regina about Henry in a way that didn't allow for the Dark One to have a say. Regina's certainty and strength had allowed her to set aside her own panic and focus on the plan to success that Regina was pulling out of thin air. Everything had appeared to be well on its way to Regina saving the day since Emma was clueless as to how to even begin the journey.

But then, something inside of Regina had shifted and now all Emma felt was an onslaught of undefined emotion that was invading every piece of her. It tangled and weaved Darkness and Light lashing out at her for what seemed to be reasons unknown. It was chaotic and she couldn't keep up with it, so she did what she normally did when Regina started scripting them into a conversation that would only end in both of them being unreasonably angry.

"Regina," Emma snapped in an effort to grab Regina's attention. "I'm not real clear on what's happening here, but you need to talk to me."

Regina looked down at her forearm where Emma's dagger was housed. Her desperate measures at ensuring Emma's darkness remain in control didn't seem so…blindly selfless as it had before. For all of the pain and control it took to hold the dagger, it seemed a little less spectacular since it had always been her destiny to wield it since she couldn't remain Queen without Emma by her side.

"Regina," Emma reached out and grabbed onto the arm Regina was so intently concentrating on, "what is it? Is something wrong with the dagger?" She asked trying to make sense of the sudden turn that their conversation had taken.

"Do you think," Regina began to ask, her voice steadier than it had any right to be, "that you can remove it?"

Emma's eyes widened. "The dagger?" She questioned. "You want me to try and remove it?" Again she looked down at her token embedded into Regina's skin, completely confounded by the mere suggestion that it be removed.

"Yes," Regina answered, yet offered no other explanation. She could not explain her sudden need to prove that destiny could once again be driven by her will.

"Isn't that dangerous?" Emma thought back to everything she had been learning about the Old Magic, but she had always been more interested in finding Regina's token and taking it on than removing hers from Regina. Every fiber of her being knew that her token was not to be removed as it was where it belonged...where it would keep them both safe.

"Possibly deadly," Regina nodded.

As if it had caught fire, Emma's hands hurriedly released Regina's arm. "Regina," she warned, "I don't know what kind of power trip you're on right now, but it's not funny."

"Take it out." Regina's words screeched through the room like a screw being drilled into a metal plate. They were loud and obnoxious and were undoubtedly an order for submission.

Emma's hands were compelled to move from the directive they had been given. They hovered over Regina's skin with magic sparking on the edges of her fingertips. "If you're joking," Emma's voice strained against her internal struggle to fight against the order she was required to follow, "now's the time to let me in on it."

Regina swallowed but didn't recant her order. She kept her silence as Emma's magic made contact with her skin.

"Damn it, Regina!" Emma screamed as she began to use her dark magic to pull at the dagger. She wanted to close her eyes so that she wouldn't have to look as her magic ripped apart Regina's arm, but a part of her didn't want to give Regina the satisfaction of her retreat. So instead, she met Regina's gaze and dared the other woman to look away.

Eventually, the pain became too much and a scream ripped passed Regina's lips. Her eyes broke away from Emma's realizing that she just might die trying to prove something that no one else could understand. They would just see her as the victim of Emma's malice and poor judgement.

Again, Emma tried to stop herself but Regina's order stood sacrosanct in its blanket of nonsense. But then, Emma realized that it wasn't herself that she needed to control; it was Regina. So she used her hand that wasn't tearing a hole into Regina's arm and ripped out Regina's heart. Her movements were so swift that she wasn't quite sure she had done it correctly until she felt the slight pulsing of a heart in the palm of her hand.

"Tell me to stop," the words ripped from her throat full of desperation, but were an order nonetheless.

Regina gasped but she whispered, "Stop,".

Immediately, Emma's magic ceased ripping into Regina's flesh as it tried to remove something that Regina could no longer part with. "Now," Emma said as heavy breaths tore from her lungs. "What the hell was that about?"

Regina's hand went to cover her heartless chest. "Proving a point, I guess," she confessed.

"A point!?" Emma yelled incredulously. "What point?"

"Just testing the shackles,," Regina breathlessly answered with a hint of ironic amusement shadowing her tone.

"Am I supposed to know what that means?" Emma stepped closer to Regina, choosing to ignore the levity that Regina was exhibiting. "Is that supposed to make up for you ordering me to kill you?"

"Don't exaggerate." Regina's hand fell from her chest. "I never ordered you to kill me."

"Semantics," Emma accused. "Which doesn't explain what exactly it was that you were trying to prove."

Regina shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Now," she straightened and tried to gather what composure she had so quickly forfeited, " give me back my heart."

"You're insane," Emma stepped out of the breadth of Regina's reach. "You're not getting this back until I know you aren't going to try and get me to murder you again."

"Emma, really?" Regina stepped forward. "Now you're just being dramatic."

"You could make the sanest person crazy," Emma voiced her frustration. She had no intent to offer Regina her heart back even though she could tell that whatever insanity had taken Regina over had run its course. Though, having that knowledge did nothing to wash away the panic and despair that still bubbled through her blood. It had always been clear that Regina could not be trusted with hearts—especially not her own. "You don't get this back," she said as she cradled the heart closer to her chest. "Especially since you've proven you can be so careless with it."

Regina's hands moved to rest on her hips. "And what do you mean by that?"

"You're always offering it up like it doesn't matter!" Emma exclaimed. "You throw it away like _you_ don't matter, and you fucking matter, Regina. You matter to Henry and you matter to this town and you damn well matter to me. So you don't get it back until you stop trying to abandon me to all of this."

Without thinking about what it was she was doing or how she was going to do it, Emma called up what magic she had been using to take the dagger and used it to instead push Regina's heart into the spot next to hers.

As soon as Regina realized what it was that Emma was doing, she tried to yell out and tell Emma to stop, but her words, even if given as an order, were given too late.

"Oh Swan," Regina growled, "You never think about magic before you use it, do you?"

"If I did then you'd be dead by now," Emma tried to defend herself as she felt along the traces of Regina's heart that now laid beveled against her chest. It appeared as if someone had etched a shadow onto her chest that cradled her own heart in its wake. "What have I done?" She genuinely asked as her eyes crept from her heart to Regina's eyes.

A spread of warmth carried itself over Regina's skin. She could feel her heart settling into its new home, syncing its beat alongside its new partner. "Of course you being, well…you, have done the theoretically impossible and are sustaining two hearts."

Emma looked back down at her chest. "It feels…weird."

Regina raised her brow. "It should feel weird. No one," she immediately corrected herself, "almost no one can hold two." Her hand dropped from her waist and she brought it up to take back her heart. "But not even you can sustain it forever so it's best you return it."

"Wait," Emma held up a halting arm as her brain worked through Regina's explanation, knowing that Regina did not hesitate in leaving out pertinent details when she felt it suited her.

"Don't," Regina warned as she realized Emma was piecing together bits of half-truth. "Just give me back my heart."

"Zelena said you shouldn't be able to hold the dagger," Emma said more to herself than to Regina. "If anyone could have done it then she would have done it with Rumple, but she couldn't. She couldn't take on a token for him."

"Emma," Regina tried again. "I will reach out and rip it from you."

Emma's hand went back to the beveled heart that she had absorbed. "It's your token." Her eyes shifted to Regina. "Is that what you were trying to prove? Was this some sort of test?"

Regina dropped her hand, knowing that her heart was not going to be returned. "We have tried so hard to escape fate, Emma" she finally decided to confess. "But we're walking along the path that's been set for us. None of it is random, and now…" she waved at Emma's chest, "you've just taken us one step further in denying us our independence from destiny."

Emma released a heavy sigh. "You should really learn to just use your words, Regina," she softly chastised, "instead of jumping right to death and destruction."

"My words," Regina helplessly grounded out, "would have done very little to deconstruct destiny."

"What are you afraid of?" Emma guilelessly asked. "What about this destiny freaks you out so much?"

A humorless laugh fell from Regina. "Are you of all people seriously asking me that?"

Caught in her own moment of uncertainty and still not entirely sure what it was that had just happened between them, Emma briefly considered declaring her surrender and then walking away, but she couldn't help but barrel on since their darkest moments were often when they each were the most honest. "Of course I'm asking," she declared. "Because we're not the victims of destiny, Regina, we're the survivors. We have fought and clawed our way to this point when either one of us could have just rolled over and died- _literally_ died. But because you're a stubborn bitch and I'm just too stupid to know better, somehow I've got your heart stuck in my chest and you have a dagger embedded in your arm, and we are still both alive."

"And yet," Regina lowly cut in before Emma could continue, "you are the Dark One and I'm still the Evil Queen."

"Why is that a bad thing?" Emma whispered with a voice full of genuine curiosity. "Why is it that what _they_ call us means more than who we are?"

Emma's words fell between them like the eye of a storm sends all of the chaos away.

"I think," Regina whispered as she moved forward to place the flat of her right hand against Emma's chest on longer intent on ripping away the token Emma now held, "my heart is affecting you already."

Emma looked down at her chest and the hand holding onto the beats of her hearts. "Oh," she said through a stuttered breath. "You think so?"

Regina nodded. "You've just ask a question of me that I've asked of myself a million times," she admitted. "And, I've yet to find the answer."

Emma tried to take stock of her own feelings and parse them out from whatever effects Regina's heart might be having on her. She tried to understand whether it was her own frustration that had sparked her words or whether it was Regina's. Then, she just wondered if it even mattered.

"It's not you, Emma," Regina reiterated. "You've always wanted to live up to what they call you, and I," she scoffed, "have always tried to run from it."

Emma slowly reached up and cupped the hand laid over her chest. "Do you really want this back?"

Regina had masterfully avoided making decisions. Everything thus far had been a choice made in the spur of the moment when limited options presented themselves and consequences were weighed on a sliding scale...there had been no push to stop and measure all the things that could be, that might be, or that should be. But, the prologue was over. She had taken the dagger and Emma had taken her heart.

"There is a right and a wrong here," she claimed. "And I don't know which one will save you, or me for that matter. But the Old Magic doesn't care about consequence and price-it's too raw for that. It only cares about balance...two equal weights holding the scale. And neither you nor I can break that." She dropped her hand severing the spark of connection she felt to her heart and to Emma, and then stepped away not quite sure what it was she should do or feel.

"Then I'll take care of it," Emma promised.

Regina stepped further away and then turned to walk away. Too much had happened for her to continue to stand and face it. "You're the only one that ever has," she whispered under her breathe and then more loudly added, "I'll set up dinner with Henry," and then walked out of the room.

Emma watched Regina go, knowing better than to try and follow because her heart told her to give it time.


	9. Chapter 9

**Thank you for your patience. I'm one of those people that tend to work well over 40 hr. weeks. By brain sometimes is more interested in not thinking than trying to write anything out that makes sense.**

Storybrooke, for all the magic and mystics and myth that resided within it, was a mundane runt of a town. It was too small both in spirit and mind to be considered worth saving. Yet, time and time again it had been offered a second chance to show its worth to a world that didn't even know it existed. It was self-important, drowning in its ego and filled to the brink with people who didn't deserve her loyalty. Yet, she was forced in giving it anyway, because that was the rule that had been written long before she had even been born.

And so she stood looking out the window bothered by the fact that nothing outside of it had changed. Cars drove by as they always had, squirrels scurried about on the ground as birds flew overhead, and people went about their business like their lives' routines were not fundamentally altered. There was a distinct lack of evidence that anyone noticed that the air they breathed was created and sustained by their Queen and that their souls rested in the hands of a Darkened Savior.

"You seem distracted, love," Zelena called from her place on the thinly padded bed she'd been forced to sleep on since she'd been locked away by the mighty band of heroes who failed to give merit to the modern justice system consisting of a fair trial. "You don't seem quite yourself. If I'd have to guess, I'd say my dear sister has done something to ruin all your fun. You seem," she errantly waved her right hand about as she searched for the proper words to insult her visitor, "almost human".

"That's not a bad thing," Emma said as she turned from the window. "You should try it some time."

"Oh," Zelena covered her heart with her hands, "and here I thought we were friends, you and I."

"I have no friends," Emma declared. "They never prove their worth."

Zelena hiked her brow. "So we do have something in common. Shall we be besties?" She clapped her hands together excitedly. "Perhaps, I'll be better suited to your current predilections than my dear overindulged sister."

Emma couldn't help but smile at Zelena's manufactured enthusiasm. She knew that Regina's long lost sister had done horrible things, but she couldn't help but liking the winding exploration of Zelena's unfiltered madness. It was refreshing to deal with someone who wasn't trying to pretend life was normal.

"Tell me about Regina's heart," Emma demanded instead of directly responding to her companion's sarcasm. "You wanted it more than you wanted her dead."

Zelena chuckled. "And here I thought that you knew that it's always the heart that matters. My esteem for you, Dark One, is really hitting an all-time low."

Emma felt a flare of anger crash against the back of her mind. Her silent passenger was waking up and it wanted to join the conversation. Despite the vagueness as to what the motivation her alter ego had in wanting to play with the witch, she let it out choosing to sidestep the consequences of losing control. "You're such a privileged child and you don't even know it," it accused..

"You've obviously forgotten," Zelena quickly shifted, instinctually knowing to begin garnering her defenses, "I'm in the looney bin shut off from all _human_ contact."

"And you're alive," It helpfully pointed out. "You always forget to mention that while you're moaning about how absolutely rubbish your life's been in all of its twists and turns."

Zelena raised her brow. "Life is subjective." She raised her hands and wiggled her fingers as if she were mimicking the pretend motions of a cartoon hocus pocus act. "You try living without magic, Your Darkness."

Emma casually walked towards Zelena, their eyes latched onto each other not breaking contact even as Emma invaded Zelena's personal space. "But it's the heart, right," Emma asked as she placed her hand inches from Zelena's chest, "that matters? As long as you still have it then your life remains yours."

Zelena stiffened and her eyes narrowed slightly, but she forced herself not to move. She knew the Dark One well enough to know that any sign of retreat or self-preservation would lessen her worth. "But my heart isn't quite the one you want to control, is it?" She deflected. "I don't really think I'm _either_ of your types."

Emma shrugged. "A heart's a heart. I think I probably should have taken yours sooner-ripped it out the moment you threatened to be the next incompetent destroyer of our world."

"Besides the fact that it doesn't suite your desires," Zelena inched backwards, covering her retreat by flipping her hair away from her face, "I'm sure that beneath your unfortunate bout of amnesia that you are aware that you can't control a witch whose magic is bound. It's like pulling on a string with nothing tethered to the end of it."

"And," Emma added as a memory of a previous experience unfaded from the lives she had lived that were not her own, "if I take your heart now it would kill you."

"As well as my sister's lover's precious little bundle," Zelena looked down at her protruding belly for effect, hoping Emma would find sympathy where the Dark One would not. "Say what you will about Regina, but she never would abandon a child."

The insult was meant to hurt both her and the previous form of the Dark One, Emma knew that. She was more than aware that Zelena had always been watchful-always seeking out the silent pain of those around her so that she could measure and weigh the power it held over her enemies. Though she was a powerful witch, Zelena was not a master of raw power. Her strength was in her ability to slowly strip the defenses of others away.

She could not win in a battle against the Dark One or Emma. They both knew that. Yet, they both also knew that Zelena was using her strongest weapon too soon in their play for dominance. She didn't hold enough knowledge yet to strike out at Emma's insecurities. She didn't understand Emma's tie to Regina, underestimated its value and its strength. She didn't know that Emma held Regina's heart within her chest, and didn't know the power it gave her...or the mercy.

So although the Dark One wished to press its advantage and claim control over the witch, Emma stepped away and let the small victory escape. There was no honor in beating the broken witch. "In the Old Magic," Emma easily retreated back to the original core of curiosities, "two hearts had significance, what was it?"

Not unused to the unpredictable cadence of the Dark One, Zelena let her defeat rest in its death at her feet until she figured out another way to use the flurry of the Dark One's emotions in her favor. "Are you worried about the Charmings?" she wondered. "Are you afraid that your parents will be able to smother out your bad magic with the thing Regina did to them?"

"Afraid?" Emma's left brow peaked. "I have never feared a Charming."

"Perhaps a poor choice of words," Zelena immediately acquiesced. "But my inadequate verbiage aside, that kind of binding cannot be ignored considering your current magical restrictions."

"I have no restrictions," Emma easily admitted yet offered no further explanation.

Zelena's eyes narrowed and she looked into Emma as if she were attempting to look directly through flesh. "You wouldn't have been so bold as to have killed my dear sister, would you have?" She asked without leaving breath for an answer. "That would be the most efficient way to break out of the fetters that control you, but I suspect the bits and pieces that keep you Emma wouldn't allow for that." She edged off of the bed she still sat on. Finally bold enough to challenge the Dark One now that she had been given the ammo to do so. "Tell me, what is it you've done?"

One of the many faults of being an Imp was the tendency she had acquired to brag about her victories. Emma wanted to see Zelena's face after she confessed that she had managed to take the Evil Queen's heart. She wanted to see all the terror that would cross Zelena's face as the weak little witch realized that her power had become absolute.

But, the weaknesses of the Imp were not necessarily her own. Emma had Regina's heart pounding away in her chest, reminding her that there was another kind of power in capturing an enemy with slight of hand instead of an iron fist.

"Tell me what it means to have two hearts," Emma demanded.

Zelena's mind worked at solving the puzzle wrapped inside of Emma's question, but she didn't have enough of its pieces to decipher any meaning. "Old magic," she answered as she waved the entire notion of its significance away. "Not worth doing really since both hearts must be shattered to have two in one body."

"So my parents," Emma wondered, "their hearts are broken?"

"Well," Zelena drew out the word, "not entirely. They have True Love so, there's that and it does help them not die. But broken is broken, dear. There's no returning from that. Honestly, if my inept sibling's magic was any weaker they'd be dead."

"Why can Regina do that kind of magic?" Emma directly asked knowing the answer meant something beyond even her current understanding.

Zelena's eyes shifted to a spot just beyond Emma's right shoulder. She, too, often wondered why Regina had been adept at a magical art that very few even knew had existed. "Because she's given everything though she doesn't deserve it."

"Me and her both have it in us," Emma chose to ignore Zelena's bout of irrational jealousy. "That can't be random coincidence."

"I suppose not," Zelena agreed. "It does make an odd sort of sense that you both would carry a bit of the Old Magic since you're both so annoyingly hard to kill."

"I'm glad to see that you're using your time so wisely," Regina's voice broke into their conversation like she had been a part of it the entire time, and perhaps a part of her had been since she could feel the ebb and flow of emotion as Emma and the Dark One badgered Zelena.

"Well, haven't we been a bad girl." Though her words were meant to goad Regina, Zelena had no real desire to risk a physical altercation and slid back to the safety of her thin mattress. "You don't write. You don't call. You don't bother at all to let me know you've got control of the most powerful Dark One to exist in recent history. You just take all of your toys to play with them in a corner all by yourself."

"I have nothing to say to you," Regina told her sister, her tone intentionally dismissive.

"You don't even want to check on the bundle of joy?" Zelena rubbed her hand across the slight bump of her stomach. "Robin would certainly disapprove."

Emma's heart filled with the cool heat of adrenaline and she felt the wisps of possessiveness float across her consciousness. She had never considered herself to be the type of person to take ownership of another, but she felt the urge to step closer to Regina to claim the other woman and let Zelena know that Regina belonged to no one else.

Regina raised her brow as Emma moved to her side, but decided not to comment on it. Instead, she kept her attention focused on her sister. "Robin may certainly have his opinions, but they no longer concern me."

"What do you mean?" Zelena immediately questioned. "What have you done?"

"She's done nothing," Emma answered on Regina's behalf. "It was my Darkness that he couldn't handle."

"Then he left you?" Zelena pointed to her sister. "Well isn't that truly disappointing. All my machinations and it's you who destroys your own happiness by choosing honor over true love." She gave a faux laugh. "Given everything and always turn it to rubbish."

"Watch yourself," Emma warned. "It is only her mercy that has kept you alive. Do you honestly believe that the Dark One and the Queen couldn't find a way to sustain a growing child without its host?"

"Old Friend," Regina placed a calming hand on Emma's arm. "Don't." It wasn't a demand, although it would have had no meaning if it had been. The dagger could not control a heart that did not live within its power.

But control...power...dominance...whatever word used to describe the loss of being master of one's own fate, even if it no longer applied to the rules of the relationship between The Queen and the Dark One, that did not been it was void between Emma and Regina. They had bound each other in Old Magic, and the meaning of such power and control escaped them both.

And since it was the Old Magic that Emma chose to obey and not a demand for submission, Zelena-ever observant and waiting-noticed. Because the Dark One never obeyed willingly. It always struggled just a bit...hesitated a mere moment before giving into its eternal shackles. But Emma had not hesitated-she had not submitted. She had chosen.

"Forgive me," Zelena offered artificial apologies. "It's easy to forget one's manners while cooped up alone. There's simply no one around to practice them on"

"You're done here." Regina told Emma, and then reached out her hand. "Henry is waiting."

Emma took the offered hand and as soon as Regina felt Emma's skin against her own she removed them from her sibling's presence.

Zelena curiously watched them disappear in a smell of magic that smelled oddly foreign to what she had normally associated to the mixing of Emma and Regina's magic. If she were anyone else, she might dismiss it and just attribute the odd mixture to the adding in of the Dark One's own unique signature. But Zelena didn't outright dismiss anything. If she had then she would have been dead long ago.

"The power of two hearts, eh Dark One?" Zelena asked the empty room. "I guess you never did bother to learn about the power of Souls...pity that."


End file.
